Creative Writing Activities for Dialogue

Don't know what your characters should say?  Her are some ways to help your characters to speak:

Persuasive Dialogue. Dialogue needs some form of tension or suspense to hold reader interest. Sometimes suspense is created intrinscially, as when readers know more than the character, and sometimes it is created extrinsically, through character conflict. Imagine two characters. One wants to do something and the other does not. Or one wants something the other has. Write a dialogue between these two characters, where one character is determined not to give in to the other, to create extrinsic tension.

Argumentative Dialogue. Dialogue simulates real conversation, it is not an exact copy. Dialogue must be pared back to remove redundancies, mistakes, and filler words. To illustrate this, pair individuals off and provide each pair with a subject of debate. Whichever side one's character will take, the other's must take the opposing view. Have each pair politely and respectfully debate their subject for five or ten minutes.

When the time is up, have each individual transcribe the dialogue as closely as possible. Then have them remove all niceties such as please and thank you, any repetition, all filler words, etc., to capture the essence of the argument rather than the argument in its entirety. When they have finished, have both members of each pair read their transcriptions aloud to see how the accounts differ. If you have time for a "Part II" to this exercise, have each pair revise their dialogue set to include "beats," or the the "action tags" that show the small actions characters take as they engage in dialogue.