How to Write Compelling Dialogue

Overview

What you will study

The How to Write Compelling Dialogue course offered by University of Oxford offers a range of activities: critical analysis of extracts, planning and writing dialogue-driven short scenes for script and prose fiction, etc. to explore the key skills and techniques used by scriptwriters and novelists to create dialogue in different genres. We will look not just at what characters say but at the motives and subtext that must drive and focus every line they speak; and at the dynamics that develop between characters placed into a scene or situation in a plot.  

Creating lines for characters to speak, especially characters far removed from the writer’s own personality, beliefs and situation, is both a liberating and challenging key part of drama and prose fiction writing.

You can engage in conversations, deliver opinions and create speeches that you would never express in reality, but what writing techniques do you use to ensure that what your characters say is convincing and compelling? What opportunities are gained by being free of any authorial voice? How do you ensure you control the intended message to the reader or audience when you are speaking through a character driven by their own motives and inner life?