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Managing Fictional Narrative Flow - Dialogue/Indirect Discourse
Unit Completion Date: End of Week 9
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The single most useful dialogue skill you can develop is an understanding of when not to use dialogue. It sometimes comes as a revelation to developing writers that not everything said in a story has to be in dialogue, and moreover, most of what's said probably doesn't need to be. Rather than giving a word-for-word account of a character receiving directions to the mall, it's usually enough to simply report directly through the narrative voice that the character was given directions.
This kind of second-hand reportage of dialogue is what Pam Painter and Anne Bernays call indirect discourse. Exercise 39 in What If? provides a wonderful explanation of indirect discourse as concept as well as practice with the technique. Complete the first part of the exercise using your selected story from Best American and the second part using characters from your own story. This exercise will not be posted to the course site, but should be placed in the dialogue section of your craftbook.
Dialogue Exercise 3 (Opt.) - Indirect Discourse
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