Your Daily Writing Prompt

This week’s creative writing prompts focus on writing better dialogue. Every Sunday we start a new theme for the week’s writing prompts.

My apologies for falling off the face of the earth last week. I’ve learned my lesson to plan ahead for my blog posts! I’m continuing from where I left off with dialogue prompts from the previous week.

Today’s Writing Prompt

Let’s work on subtext in relationship to dialogue.

People don’t say what they mean. They hint around. They avoid. Some tell analogous stories. But they almost never say exactly what they want. If your characters are saying exactly what they want, then your dialogue probably needs improving. Today, make up a conversation between two characters who each want a different thing. When people don’t say precisely what they want, that creates interesting conflict, especially when the reader understands the subtext.

Write a dialogue-heavy scene in which:

One character wants to go on a second honeymoon.

The other character wants to ask for a divorce.

Notice how their goals are at odds? When each character wants something different, that also create conflict and more interesting scenes. Most importantly, do not have the characters say what they want. Save that for the very end. Or the next scene, perhaps.

You can post your daily writing exercises in the comments section of the blog post if you’d like or you can post on our Facebook group. Or you can keep them to yourself. It’s all fine with me.

Go forth and write,

Nicole

Remember:

You can write about yourself or apply these prompts to your character.
It’s okay to change personal pronouns (he to she or she to I, etc.)
You don’t have to follow the prompt exactly; it’s more important that you get words on the page today.
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