Creative Writing Sparked by Dialogue

          Snippets of dialogue serve as excellent writing prompts when they are ambiguous enough to suggest various possible tones, and in turn, various contexts for scene development. Often I propose that my students write two separate scenes founded upon the same line of dialogue interpreted differently. That writing exercise is part of a lesson on tone and how to convey specific moods in literature. I sometimes craft my own fictional scenes based on one line of dialogue uttered by a character's voice in my mind; from those scenes, novels are born. 

          Given two dialogue lines--"Um...you're welcome...," and "I just wanted to tell you how much you've inspired me..."--as prompts to create a piece of short fiction, my young teenage student wrote this:

Rejected 
by L.Z.

          I am so excited, but also very nervous. I’ve never done anything like this before, but
missing a chance to meet her in person would leave me in regret for the rest of my life. So here I am now, standing in the back of a line so long that I cannot even see the actual author and her desk, but then, suddenly, through a gap in the crowds, I get a good look at her. She looks just like the woman on the back cover of my book, with her beautiful smile, signing for her loyal fans.
     
          In a flash, I am in the front of the line. “Hi,” she said smiling, “Would you like me to sign your book?”

          I breathed deeply trying to calm my nerves. “Actually, I just wanted to tell you how much you’ve‐‐”

          She interrupted me, her smile disappearing, “So you don’t have a book for me to sign?”

          “No,” I responded, “But I just wanted to tell you how much you’ve inspired me. I also read your books everyday.”

          “Okay... Thank you?” the author replied impatiently.


          “Um...you’re welcome.” I trudged out the exit towards my car.


          Only now, after discovering who she really was, have I realized that her smile was
cold and fake, and unlike what she wrote on the back of the book, she did not actually respect her supporters. There are many other people in the world who deserve more fame and respect than someone like her. 

          The dialogue-based writing prompt could have evoked other scenes so different from the student's scene (above) that a reader might not even notice that the same dialogue lines appear in both. For example, "Um...you're welcome" could be uttered by a humble person who is uncomfortable accepting thanks; or by a rude person who has no intention of giving anything in the first place; or by a person who is unsure about why he is being thanked; or by a snide person who says these words to remind an impolite person to say "thank you"; or, as in this piece, by a disillusioned person who doubts the sincerity of the thanks she has received. Similarly, the speaker who tells another person how much s/he has inspired her could declare those words effusively, with sincere admiration for a warmly appreciative role model; or she could shyly murmur them and evoke tears from the mentor in return; or she could sneer as she utters those words snidely to someone she has no respect for at all. Thus, you can see how even a single dialogue line can serve as a path that branches off in various directions via the literary landscape planted by purposefully chosen, vivid verbs and memorable descriptions. 

Doing My Student's Homework

          A writing teacher should not assign prompts without attempting to write her/his own model responses, too. If I can't write passionately to a prompt I assign, then I cannot expect a student to tackle the task with any enthusiasm. Here is an essay I wrote in response to a thought-provoking cartoon that I assigned today to a 16-year-old student (as homework). The prompt is intended to evoke a personal opinion essay (four paragraphs) about the overuse of cell phones and the current American obsession with staying "connected." I purposely wrote with a plethora of specific details and figurative language to encourage him to choose similarly precise and creative words. 

Cell Phone Sabbaticals for Sanity

By Susan L. Lipson

A cartoon from The New Yorker depicts a woman reclining on a beach while searching through her purse for her cell phone and saying to two fellow beachgoers: “I’ll be on vacation until I find my cell phone.” The warmth of the sand on her bare toes, and the hypnotic shushing of the ocean, will immediately vanish once her fingers touch the cool screen of the smart phone, and her ears tune in to the insistent beep of notifications. Although cell phones act like stabilizing anchors by keeping us connected and reachable even as we continue to make waves, they simultaneously restrain us from floating off to relax at sea, away from responsibilities, in stress-free vacation mode. To truly enjoy a vacation—uninterrupted by telephone calls from home or work, disconnected from emails that demand responses or dictate tasks, unaware of social media campaigns and calls for attention to a tiny screen—we must “dumb down” our smart phones and develop a “vacation mode” (or at least a vacation mindset) that would restrict cell phone usage during preprogrammed travel dates.

Ironically, we cannot fully recharge ourselves while attached to fully computerized phones that are never unplugged; we must unplug and power down in order to empower ourselves to experience the temporary freedom known as “vacation.” Communication, while essential to human existence, requires energy, sometimes from electronic devices as well as from the humans who operate them. Conservation of that energy is the purpose of a vacation—like a reset button on a continuously running computer. If we tune out of business-world communications via electronic devices, and instead tune in to face-to-face interpersonal communication or introspective communication via meditation or quiet time, then we can truly experience the bliss of losing ourselves in our thoughts, in new activities, and in the company of our fellow vacationers.

The paranoia of powering off keeps too many people from finding the peace they need for their own health. They worry about missing “Something Important”—whatever that might be. Thus, this over-connectedness may even be a new kind of anxiety disorder (not to mention an addiction). The symptoms of this contagious disorder manifest themselves as cell phones left on dinner tables between diners; as darting eyes that attempt to appear engaged while checking for flashes and notification banners; as vibrating pockets and purses that frequently evoke dashes to bathrooms or lobbies; as excessive interest in Wi-Fi availability in selecting public places to meet with others; and as avoidance of any communication that does not involve typing. In the days when phones were only for calling people, we left our computers in our offices, along with automatic “vacation responder” messages to notify contacts that we would be incommunicative for a certain time period. We traveled, back then, not with Bluetooth devices in our ears, but with headphones to listen to our favorite music. Today, however, our phones are pocket computers, enabling us to take work and obligations with us wherever we roam, turning us into stressed-out workaholics who even use “silent mode” to communicate stealthily in every context.

The stress-related health risks associated with over-connectedness point to a need for phones to offer to a new, user-programmed “vacation mode." This self-regulated mode could be restricted to: 1) phone calls to designated Vacation-Approved Favorites (family and close friends); 2) camera shots that could automatically be stored in a folder titled “Vacation Photos”; 3) travel information apps (for transportation, lodging, maps, restaurant and tourist site reviews); and 4) music players. Time off can only serve its rejuvenating purpose if we turn off, as much as possible, our connections to the working world. 

Making Humorous Use of the Carpe Diem Theme

       
Having discussed the theme of carpe diem ("seize the day") in literature with my middle school and high school students, they recognized this concept immediately in this poem I found posted on Facebook, "Dust If You Must," by Rose Milligan. The full poem appears  below.

          So after reading and discussing the poem--and giggling with morbid enthusiasm over the final stanza, which some didn't fully understand at first--I asked them to use the poem as the basis for a story with the "seize the day" theme. (In case you can't read the last stanza clearly, it reads: "Dust if you must,  but bear in mind,/ Old age will come and it's not kind,/ And when you go--and go you must,/ You, yourself, will make more dust.") I created teams to collaborate and suggested that they write about an obsessively clean or orderly person who learns what really matters in life from another person, who quotes this poem to her/him. To my surprise, a couple of them nodded, saying, "Oh, you mean an OCD person, right?" Either these preteens are psychologists-in-training or authors-in-the-making. I vote for the latter, especially after reading this story that evolved from a collaboration by K.E. and S.V., two middle-school girls.

     "Wanna go to the movie, Anna?" Roxy asked, though she already knew the answer.

     "What? Oh, no. I'm starting on the social studies project," Anna answered, barely looking up from the piles of papers put in neat stacks on her desk.

     "Um…you mean the one that's going to be assigned in a week?" Roxy raised her eyebrow.

     "I know, I know. I should have started it LAST week," Anna muttered, ashamed.

     "We didn't even know it existed until today!" Roxy grumbled. "Cut loose would you? Carpe diem!"

     Anna sighed, not wanting to step on Roxy's leather-booted toes. Anna had adjusted to Roxy's obnoxious, oh-god-let's-do-this attitude, but it still interfered with her "snobby, perfectionist life." As Anna contemplated the similarities between Japan and China, Roxy rolled her eyes. "Come on, Anna! You don't have to start right now!"

     "Yes I do! Do you know how embarrassing it would be if I got a 100%?" Anna shuddered, just thinking about it. Roxy sighed. She had heard enough about Anna's "above hundred percentage." 

     "Fine, Anna. Call me when you decide to stop throwing away your life. I have one word for you. YOLO!" Roxy muttered. As she was walking away, Anna stopped her. 

     "Stop! You're about to step on the place I'm about to put my backpack on. You don't want me having a dirty backpack?"

     "Oh my god, you're so pretentious!" Roxy stormed out. Anna didn't know where she was going, though, since class was just about to start.

     Roxy saw the teacher walk in and she stormed back towards Anna and sat down next to her. Roxy slumped down in her seat.

     A few moments later while the teacher was giving a lesson about geometric shapes, a note landed on Anna's desk from the direction of Roxy.

     "Dust if you must, but bear in mind,

      Old age will come and it's not kind. --Rose Milligan"

     "What's that supposed to mean? I'm not even dusting right now! Dusting's from 2:00 to 3:00. She should know this! And I'm not that old! I'm only 13. Hmph. I'm not wasting my life. Just because I never do extracurricular activities, or have fun, or…"

The End

PLEASE LEAVE YOUR COMMENTS FOR THE TWO YOUNG AUTHORS (OR ME) IN THE SECTION BELOW. AND FEEL FREE TO SHARE THIS POST! THANKS.

Writing Lesson about Far More than Writing

My writing students are my favorite teachers. The other day, I led a lesson titled "An Exploration of Confronting Prejudice," prompted by a few choices of opening lines that I created to initiate dialogues between characters to illustrate various ways to confront prejudice. I told the students (13 and 14 year olds) to "create a character to utter the bigotry-laden line, and then have another character reacting to that line in a way that shows readers YOUR way of responding to such vile words." Their resulting pieces amazed me, not only in the quality of the short short stories they created, but mainly in the varied and valid responses they illustrated for dealing with blatant prejudice. Our discussion of each piece resonated with all of us, I believe, teaching them far more than writing skills. To my now almost famous "D.A.D. Technique for Vivid Word Pictures" (D=Description, A=Action, D=Dialogue), they added another D, for Depth!

The opening lines I gave them specifically targeted some of the nationalities, cultures, and races of the students themselves, who are Indian, Chinese, Italian, Jewish, and part-Irish. Here are a few samples:

• Rahim sneezed in class. "God bless you, blurted Jacob automatically. "I mean, YOUR God, er, that is, if you people actually do believe in God, that is..."
  
• "YOU made the basketball team? I didn't know Asians could play sports!"
• "What's the matter with you? You're Asian! Why did YOU get a C?!"
• As an African-American teenage boy walked toward their table to the coffee shop counter, Sandy whispered to Mary, "Maybe you should move your purse off the back of your chair and put it under the table."
• "Look at that old Jewish-looking guy in front of us, the one with the big nose. He's keeping everyone waiting in this line so he can use his stupid coupons. What does a rich Jew need coupons for anyway?"
  
• "Mom, can I go to a party at my friend Joe Flanagan's house tonight?" The mom comments on the last name being Irish, and then asks suspiciously whether there will be drinking at that party.
• "I didn't invite you to my Christmas party because I know you people consider us infidels, so why would you want to come?"
  
• "Darn! I got stuck with a bunch of Mexican kids for study partners. I guess I'll be doing all the work."

Well, each student selected a line, as I predicted, that pertained to their personal background, or to a display of prejudice they had witnessed before. The one who chose the line about the Asian basketball player created a scene in which the Asian player chooses the path of CONFRONTATION. The offended character refutes the bigot's assumptions about Asians by citing the successes of other Asian athletes, and by challenging the contender to a play-off. The author himself is an Asian basketball player.

Another student writer, who is Indian, picked the scenario in which a person blurts "God bless you" to a Hindu. His character shows no offense, and instead chooses the reaction of EDUCATION, by informing the ignorant person about his religion to dispel misconceptions.

The student who picked the Asian kid defending himself for getting a C in school wrote his character's response as one of SHARING EARNEST FEELINGS. The character reveals his pain at not living up to the stereotypes, and his wish for compassion, rather than castigation.

The young writer who chose the scene with the African-American teenager and the woman whose purse was hanging on the back of her chair wrote a scene that ended with the more enlightened, not prejudiced woman dumping the contents of her purse on the table. Her action, to spite her friend's biased comment, reflected a response of SIMPLE SILENT ACTION as a counterargument. The quiet action immediately silences the bigot without any fighting, violence, or lectures.

Yet another potential response to prejudice was illustrated by the student who chose the unfair comment about Irish people being drinkers. The writer showed the reaction of HUMOR and SELF-DEPRECATION as a response to meanness and ignorance. The Irish boy who finds himself insulted in the scenario replies in a Irish brogue, with every stereotypically Irish line imaginable, making the mother who insulted him feel embarrassed for her stupidity. In the end, however, the mother's daughter reveals that her Irish boy friend was actually drunk all along. Before the writing class students could protest that the writer had supported the prejudicial statement, instead of refuting it, the author read her "commentary" section. Her commentary revealed that the daughter's desire to go to a party hosted by her drunken friend was meant to imply that the non-Irish girl sought drunkenness herself, and since her interest in getting drunk had nothing to do with being Irish, the assumption about Irish people being more likely to drink appears false. Clever, huh?

Anyway, this lesson revealed a lot more than variation in writing techniques and stylistic competence. The student pieces could have comprised a presentation on the many ways of confronting prejudice. I love when my lessons do "double-duty" and my students learn more than they intended to.

Inspiring awe for words and awesome writing...that's my goal.