Masters of Dialogue  March 25, 2008 - April 8, 2008

-first off, find Ernest Hemingway's "Hills Like White Elephants" online and read it. then come back here and read the rest of the directions.

stop reading! go find the story...NOW! GO!


-ok, now that you've read the story you'll have a better idea what we will be trying to write next
*a story with only two characters
*a story that takes place all during one conversation
*a story that is made up of minimum 75% dialogue between characters
**if you don't know how to figure out the 75%, select all your text
and go to TOOLS, then WORD COUNT. write the # down as a
denominator, then go through and hand-count all the non-dialogue
words and write down that # as a numerator. divide the fraction
out and you SHOULD HAVE LESS THAN 25%. this is your non-dialogue
word count.

-before you sit down ant try to just type this out in one shot, you will need
to have an idea where you're going with it. it'll be a pretty boring story if there are just two people talking and you never reach a point. it might be best to even decide the ending first, then figure out the best way to get there.

-keep in mind that when you talk to someone you know, you dont explain EVERYTHING about the subject youre talking about--BECAUSE BOTH OF YOU ALREADY UNDERSTAND. so dont make the conversation soooooo obvious, it should be genuine, so a reader might take a while to figure out whats going on. in hemingway's short story we dont know exactly whats going on, but we are able to come away with some ideas.

Fra/c/ture

Hatfield, PA

7 Contestants
7 Submissions
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Created Mar 25, 2008