Can We Talk?: Teaching Dialogue in Narrative Writing

Why It Matters

When it comes to narrative writing, there are few craft moves as powerful as adding dialogue. Through dialogue, a reader can see more clearly into our characters: who they are, how they respond, and what they want.

Adding dialogue to stories is a challenge. Not only is it important to be thoughtful about what characters say, there are a whole host of rules and conventions so that readers can make sense of what’s happening in the story.

In today’s post, I’ll outline how I’ve used activities and play to teach the elements and conventions of dialogue in narrative writing.

How it Works

When starting out with dialogue, one of the most important things a writer can do is simply to get the characters TALKING – to themselves, to the audience, to one another.

Puppet Shows. This first activity is a play-based way to let characters speak for themselves. This activity works with first-graders through adults, it’s that versatile. You can get as crafty as you’d like, but I find simple pencils and sticky notes to be effective.

• Choose one spot in a story where characters might communicate to each other.
• Take 2-3 pencils and sticky notes, and draw a quick (10-second) rendition of each character.
• Put the written story aside. It’s time to experiment and play!
• Using those “puppets,” act out a scene from the story – by oneself or with others around.
• Experiment around until the conversation makes enough sense to add to the story.

Reader’s Theater. What I love about reader’s theater is that it’s a story told entirely through oral narration and dialogue. It’s a way to think differently about how a story is told. I’ve had luck with mentor texts from Aaron Shepard. As long as you credit him with his work, his scripts are available for classroom use. 

Reader’s theater can take up as much or as little time as a teacher might let it. Using their own writing or another mentor text, students might:

• Revise a single scene as an experiment after a mini-lesson;
• Revise a classmate’s scene (or work together);
• Rewrite a simple narrative as readers’ theater;
• Produce or perform an original work for the class.

Once students gain more practice with what characters might say to themselves or one another, the question then becomes how to incorporate it into narrative. Wherever students are developmentally with their writing, the main thing is that they give readers a clear understanding of what’s happening. That can look like several things, including:

• Speech bubbles in a comic format;
• Putting each character’s words on a new line;
• Using the standard conventions for dialogue (classroom resource here). 

One Thing To Remember

We tend to think of dialogue as a difficult and complex skill. Don’t get me wrong; there is an art to believable dialogue, and the act of punctuating and paragraphing dialogue gets technical.

Still, there can – and should! – be an element of play for writers, regardless of age or readiness level. Allowing for more fun and joy loosens writers up, and opens the door to braver, more exciting narrative.