As part of the FOLD‘s (Festival of Literary Diversity) free offerings, author Sharon Bala, author of The Boat People, gave a one hour virtual workshop last Saturday.
Sitting in a coffee shop after yoga, we sipped and wrote and listened carefully through headphones connected to my laptop. We immediately noticed that she used the writing of other authors as mentor texts to demonstrate. I’m not sure exactly why this was surprizing; perhaps we thought this was going to be a session about her writing, but instead, this approach allowed her to speak to the texts as both a reader and a writer.
She began with a section from Reema Patel’s book, Such Big Dreams pointing out that dialogue can be practical and serve a purpose in fiction; in this case, Patel needed to introduce the characters and the dynamics of relationships. Bala talked through the example showing us how this establishes the power dynamics of the scene, reveals character traits, and even provides details on the setting. The motion and action of the scene comes through the dialogue and by slowing down the discussion and analysis to a few pages, the complex story beneath the main action became clear.
She gave us an example of direct dialogue and (something I had not heard of before) summary dialogue which allows the writer to increase the pace of the writing. In the mentor text, responses were found in parentheses and these lines occaisionally doubled as inner dialogue with no other signal needed.
From here she moved on to Kim Fu’s short story, “June Bugs” found in her anthology, Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century and showed us how dialogue can create tension when there is a subtext, or emotion between the lines. The tone of the dialogue changes throughout a phone call with the protagonist and establishes a power dynamic (a woman who left a domestic abuse situation thinks the caller she is helping on a service call is her former abuser). This dialogue is textured and each line addresses both the text and the subtext at the same time.
Finally, the master of dialogue, Ian Williams and his book, Reproduction.
Felicia turned back to her mother. Her mother was so careful about applying makeup and now there was no trace of it on her. Where were her earrings? Her nail polish looked more crimson than red. Felicia knocked on her knuckles.
You hearing me? Felicia leaned in. You hearing me?
She thought she saw her mother frown. She frowned. Or perhaps it was a deception of light, the passing accident of light reflected from someone’s watch face.
Felicia heard the jaunty jingle of keys behind her.
So what brings your mother here on this fine autumn afternoon?
Without moving the rest of her body, Felicia twisted her cervical vertebrae to see if he was serious.
Mutter, here, couldn’t breathe, he offered. It’s her pneumonia. He put an odd stress on the her as if he were settling a dispute between feuding children: it’s her doll, let her have it. They think the cancer might have spread to her other lung. We’re waiting. It’s not easy. The waiting. Not easy at all. Come on, get in there.
Felicia turned around fully. She hadn’t seen snow since arriving in Canada.
Edgar was slouching in one of the chairs in the middle of the room, organizing his keychain. His hair was the colour of the dried oak leaves around her school.
What do you know? she said.
I’m just telling you how it goes. I’ve been through this once, twice, be—
No, I mean what do you know about my situation?
Copyright © 2019 by Ian Williams
As the workshop came to a close, she provided us with a series of tips for writing dialogue:
- know your characters fully and thoroughly before you write their dialogue
- use a struggle between characters and make sure you know who has more power
- read the dialogue that you write out loud and remember that it is only one tool
- multitasking dialogue is more interesting – make sure it establishes character, does something to the plot, tension, subtext, etc.
is_reflecting 
You give us a lot of gifts here! A resource, a n author and a few books recommended, some dynamic examples of effective dialogue, and some great tips (which I copied for later use.) Thank you for such a generous sharing!
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Oh–this is so interesting to read! Thank you for sharing! I love the list of tips at the end–reading them, after hearing more of the context for that advice, feels so useful.
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Thank you, Natasha. I wasn’t sure if this would be useful and the feedback is helping me consider other posts for the month.
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