Laurie Ann Doyle
Contact: doyle.l@berkeley.edu
Number of sessions: 1
Time: 10:00 am–4:00 pm (includes break for lunch)
Date: Sunday, May 17
Course fee: $75
Is dialogue meant to reveal or conceal? In this interactive one-day workshop, you learn dialogue actually accomplishes both, revealing your characters by what is said and not said in fiction and memoir. We’ll read work by masters of dialogue, examining how artfully crafted speech, gesture, and silence helps you not only develop character, but generate tension, subtext, and move the plot forward. You’ll learn how to take full advantage of your characters’ expressive tics, favorite phrases, and complete withdrawal to build an immersive world for the reader. As the workshop progresses, you’ll have the chance to free-write dialogue yourself, trying on different personas of talkative, quiet, and completely uncommunicative characters, with the opportunity to share what you’ve created in a supportive atmosphere. There’s also plenty of time to address your questions and concerns. My twin goals for this workshop are for you to come with concrete strategies for creating a variety of kinds of dialogue, and to experience for yourself what writers like to keep secret: dialogue can be a whole lot of fun.
Laurie Ann Doyle is the winner of Alligator Juniper’s National Fiction Award, as well as nominations for Best New American Voices and the Pushcart Prize. Her stories, personal essays and poems have appeared in Jabberwock Review, Arroyo Literary Review, Dogwood Journal, Under the Sun, and many other literary journals. She earned an MFA at University of San Francisco and has had the pleasure of teaching creative writing at UC Berkeley since 2007. www.laurieanndoyle.com
