WORKSHOPPING A DAILOG
You are required to send your completed 5-minute dialog to two other students at the same time you send it to me. Therefore, everyone should get two dialogs to workshop.
Here's what you are asked to do:
1. As you read the dialog, correct any typos; make notes if you like or don't like a passage.
2. Correct such basic "errors" as too-long speeches by dividing them into smaller bits of dialog and as needed, adding a question or response from the other person. Dialog is not "monolog," so unless it is absolutely critical, don't write or let others write long "lectures."
3. Find any detail, action, idea that could be expanded and write some added lines for the dialog.
4. When you have done your edits and comments within the dialog, make a final comment:
A. Say who the two characters are by stating their age, personality, major attributes.
B. Say whether you think the piece succeeded. Could it become a "play?"
WHAT NEXT?
For those content (or relieved!) to be done with writing and commenting on dialog, then...
... you've done your homework and assuming it has been
sent out within the deadlines, you've got full credit!
For those who might like to take this assignment further, why not try writing a full play? If you are intent on trying for an "A" in the class, a Script Project would consist of a full dramatic script--essentially a one-act play. Suppose the scene you just wrote was the beginning, middle or end of a play consisting of three scenes. Your full play would require you to write the other two acts. You would decide what you need to "frame" and complete the scene just completed in your dialog. Consider that your initial dialog is five minutes long. A full one act play--a beginning, middle and end scene--would be at least twenty to thirty minutes long. Thus, you would expand the initial dialog and write the necessary additional scenes. Voila! Your project!
OR...You could write the story into which your dialog could fit. Look at the story exercises, which, after all are your next course assignment. Hemingway, particularly, uses a good deal of dialog. Your five-minute exercise could easily become part of a full story you write, using the same characters and situation. Instead of constructing three scenes to make a one-act play, you would write the narrative which includes the dialog/scene you have written.
