DIALOG AS PART OF YOUR STORY
It would be great if you could put your study of dialog to work as you tried to write a good story. As often good story writing is accomplished through conversations between the main characters. Too often, beginning story writers forget to provide dialog and instead write such "place markers" into their stories as "Then they talked for an long time about her feelings to her friend." If you are "narrating" the fact that a conversation took place, why not stop and write the conversation? In the process, as noted below, you can accomplish so much more in moving your story ahead!
As a practical note: You can use the same dialog in your dialog assignment to bolster and increase the length of your required story assignment! Hey, twice the credit for your work! Not bad!
In and article by Mel Niswander entitled "Dialog and Storytelling," we are told: Dialog, first of all, grows out of the role of the character in a story, novel, or drama. Who the character is (his nature) and what he does will determine the way he talks, the words he uses, the grammar he employs. The principal functions of dialog, as defined by Syd Field in his practical book on script writing, Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting, provide useful reference points:
Studying the way people actually talk may not be the best way to learn how to write dialog. Unfortunately, Mr. Niswander's article with more information is not available anymore on-line. However, here is a link to more about dialog: Use dialogue To Show Instead Of Tell Scroll down to this passage in the essay on story writing. And here is a link for more on story writing in general: http://www.eldrbarry.net/roos/eest.htm
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