Developing Your Ear for Dialogue – canceled

This seminar series has been canceled. We apologize for any disappointment or inconvenience.

Instructor: Kristie Smeltzer
$60 Members | $65 Nonmembers
Saturdays, 10/8/22 and 10/22/22 | 1:00 – 3:00 p.m. EDT

Authentic dialogue in prose serves many purposes. Dialogue is an effective tool to develop characters, move the plot, and reveal essential information to readers. Despite that we all talk to others every day, dialogue can be a deceptively hard skill to master in our writing. Compelling dialogue gives the illusion of recreating everyday speech while also being burdened with being more interesting, more streamlined, and more engaging than our typical watercooler chitchat.

In the first session, participants will read and analyze published fiction and nonfiction, specifically zooming in on the choices writers made with dialogue. We’ll identify what works and what doesn’t, and discuss why.

Between sessions, students will complete writing prompts and exercises to practice dialogue themselves, and we’ll reconvene for the second session to address questions and discuss participants’ completed assignments.

Students will leave the session with a clearer understanding of what makes for successful dialogue and insights into changes they can make in their own dialogue to take it to the next level. This seminar is open to fiction and creative nonfiction writers.

Kristie Smeltzer’s work has appeared in The Doctor T.J. Eckleburg Review, Apeiron Review, Eclectica Magazine, The Florida Review, and So to Speak. She’s been teaching at WriterHouse for six years and is also the program manager, starting in 2022. She earned her MFA at the University of Central Florida. Kristie is currently working on three novels. See more at KristieSmeltzer.com.