GBF Hands-on Workshops: How to Write Realistic Dialogue

Ron Capps knows a thing or two about writing realistic dialogue. As a writing instructor for the National Endowment for the Arts through Operation Homecoming, at Howard Community College, at The Writer’s Center, and at George Washington University, Ron has helped many writers bring their characters to life by putting the right words in their mouths. So what will he be teaching at the GBF? In his own words:

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I call this workshop “more than words” because it takes more than just words to make dialogue work in your story. Your characters have to come to life during the scenes. How you make them move and what you have them do between utterances is how this happens. Dialogue happens in real time. That means that while you can speed up or slow down time during exposition, when characters are speaking, your reader perceives it at pace with how things might unroll in the real world. So every breath between phrases and every little nuanced movement your characters make must be designed and placed perfectly to make this happen.

Further, sometimes the laws of physics have to apply—even in worlds where they are different—so, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. When one character pushes, another should react accordingly. This is true unless you want to create imbalance in your scene. In that case, one action might create an unequal or similar reaction. That’s when things become fun.

In my workshop, we’ll look at examples of how other writers have shown us all of this and we’ll actually work through a couple scenes to find ways to improve our own dialogue and our own scenes.

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Ron’s workshop, More Than Words: Making Dialogue Work, is a new addition to our workshop line up and a wonderful way for writers of all skill levels to develop this element of storytelling. Please remember that all workshops require pre-registration.