Part of any (or squarely most) stories is dialogue -- how people talk to each other and the art of what they say, what they don't say, what they mean, what is heard and what isn't heard. In some cases, whole stories have been built out of dialogue -- check out this: It's one of my favorite stories of all times:
Hills Like White Elephants, by Ernest Hemingway
And also sometimes people talking on their own like this other of my favorites:
Girl, by Jamaica Kincaid
The following is an exercise for all ages. It was developed by Richard Jackson -- I read it in The Practice of Poetry (The link here is to Amazon, but may I suggest you buy it from your favorite independent book seller <3)
There is a warm up for each level, then the exercise is at the end.
NOTE:
PLEASE SEND ME YOUR WRITING!
This is one of my favorite exercises of all times. I would really love to see what you come up with.
Send me the five sentences -- your name, age and where you are from. Also, let me know if it's ok to post!! PRETTY PLEASE
Elementary Note:
A metaphor is when something is like something else -- but you don't use the words like or as, so that the one thing and the other thing merge... this allows us to say something about the first thing without all the words...
My son's smile was my sunshine.
My daughter's laugh was a booming cannon.
Before we get started try some of your own:
_______ is a ________
take a common noun for the first blank -- and then something much much bigger or smaller in the second. Can the second say something about the way you feel about the first?
Middle Note:
You too, practice some metaphors.
The day was a green, big-eyed alien.
Toilet paper was today's Abominable Snow Man.
Write a page about how you are feeling today, about what is going on in your world. What are you afraid of? What are you finding joy in?
Use adjectives and verbs in your writing.
Now look around and think of the things near you.
The heart of metaphor is how what we see is colored by our perception.
Write five metaphors that allow the everyday things around you to say something about your day.
High School and Beyond
Metaphor.
How are you feeling today? Write for five (ten or fifteen) minutes about the way you are feeling and or what is happening in your world today. Use adjectives and verbs. Notice what the adjectives and verbs say about what you might be thinking and feeling that you didn't notice before.
The very heart of metaphor is perception and communication. How you communicate your perception. How things become distorted by our inner lives... and how we can communicate about everyday things in ways that make them more like the way we see them. Bigger, smaller, more dangerous, less important.
Write five metaphors. This is for warming up...
THE EXERCISE!
Ok -- now here's the way to do this. Take a piece of paper. You will write five sentences.
DO NOT READ AHEAD OF THE SENTENCE YOU ARE WORKING ON.
DO NOT SKIP.
I have given you some extra white space so that you can scroll to the sentence you are working on.
FIVE EASY PIECES
1. Describe the person's hands.
2. Describe something he or she is doing with the hands.
3. Use a metaphor to say something about some exotic place.
4. Mention what you would want to ask the person in the context of 2 and 3, above.
5. The person looks up or toward you, notices you there, gives an answer that suggest he or she only understands part of what you asked.
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