A Fiction Writing Workshop

Dialogue-heavy passages can be powerful workhorses in your fiction, generating tension, muscular prose and vivid scenes—or they can be limp exchanges of talk. In this one-day workshop we’ll learn to use the playwright’s tools to build layers of meaning into dialogue: we’ll explore using setting to convey a scene’s import, and we’ll focus on weaving action and character “business”—handling of objects and subtleties of behavior—into dialogue to telegraph meaning. There will be in-class writing and readings. Bring your inner ham! For all levels.

In the course of the day we’ll examine these topics:

• Dialogue as Theater
• What Good Dialogue Does
• Setting the Stage
• Gesture, Business, Action
• The Finer Points of Dialogue

M.F. Bloxam’s novel of psychological suspense, The Night Battles, was a finalist for the 2008 ForeWord Magazine Book of the Year Award. She is the author of prize-winning short fiction and historical nonfiction, and is a recipient of an Individual Artist Fellowship grant from the NH State Council on the Arts. To learn more about M.F. Bloxam's work, go to http://www.thenightbattles.com/.