- Level
- Mixed
- Basic and Premium Members Prices
- Premium Members $45 Basic Members $55
Register by May 30th and save $5, use code SILVERKNIGHT2022 at checkout!
- Category
- Characters
- Dialogue
- $5 off Early Registration Coupon-expires 1 week before class starts
- SILVERKNIGHT2022
- Class Length
- 4 Weeks
Dialogue is a writer's greatest tool when it comes to bringing a character to life. It communicates their beliefs, their emotions, and their relationships with others. It sets them apart from everyone else in the book and is a key ingredient in the story's believability.
But how do you create a different voice for every character that is simultaneously distinct from your own as the writer?
In this new month-long class, New York Times bestselling author Angela Knight explores how to write dialogue that advances character and conflict while engaging the reader's emotions and imagination. With this crucial skill, you can become an auto-buy for everyone who picks up your books.
Lessons will be posted on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, you can send scenes to Knight for private critique. She'll point out ways to strengthen your writing and improve the drama and tension in your stories.
The class will include the following twelve lessons, though Knight may add others based on student questions. Please note this is the first time Knight has presented this class, so it's all new material.
Lessons include:
But how do you create a different voice for every character that is simultaneously distinct from your own as the writer?
In this new month-long class, New York Times bestselling author Angela Knight explores how to write dialogue that advances character and conflict while engaging the reader's emotions and imagination. With this crucial skill, you can become an auto-buy for everyone who picks up your books.
Lessons will be posted on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, you can send scenes to Knight for private critique. She'll point out ways to strengthen your writing and improve the drama and tension in your stories.
The class will include the following twelve lessons, though Knight may add others based on student questions. Please note this is the first time Knight has presented this class, so it's all new material.
Lessons include:
1. Introduction: Using dialogue to create the illusion that characters are real people with their own history, drives and powerful emotional reactions.
2. Lift your Voice: deciding how a particular character should speak, taking into account their role in the book, background, external and internal conflicts, and their emotional state at any given point in the story.
3. Acting Up: How to get into character when that skin and gender may be different from your own, while avoiding stereotypes that can offend readers and tank your career.
4. We Can Be Heroes (and Heroines): Writing dialogue for protagonists which engages reader sympathy and makes them share the character's struggles, defeats and triumphs.
5. Devil in the Details: How to write dialogue for three-dimensional antagonists that chills the reader, yet doesn't descend into mustache-twirling eviiiiil.
6. Flaming Rows: Arguments between protagonists that carry emotional punch without breaking the reader's sympathy for them.
7. Sweet Nothings: Writing seductive dialogue between lovers, developing the romance while maintaining the romantic conflict.
8. Making a Funny: Detecting the potential for humor in a line and developing it to get a good laugh. How to use humor to make your villain more chilling.
9. Avoiding Info-Dump Dialogue: Feeding exposition to the reader through realistic dialogue without being boring.
10. He said, She Said: Dialogue tags and the use of character action to avoid them.
11. Power Punching: Rewriting dialogue for maximum emotional impact and clarity.
12. Keeping up the Pace: How to spot dialogue that slows the pacing or breaks the mood in the scene, and what to do about it.
- Class Format
- Savvy Authors' workshops are held on a forum: a bulletin board based system. You will receive a reminder notice one day prior to the start of the workshop that includes instructions on how to access the workshop forum. If you have not received instructions by the day the workshop begins, please check your spam filter.
The forum will be available the morning (EST) of the day the workshop starts and will remain accessible to all participants thereafter. You will also be given simple instructions on how to create a PDF of all your discussions along with our privacy and data retention policy.
