“All Talk and No Action”

guest post by Claudia Mills

          Oh, that boring word said. We do need to have some way to know which character is speaking in a stretch of dialogue, but to hear said, said, said, said, said, said is almost unbearable.

          The only thing worse, alas, is to switch out said for a bunch of “fancy” speech verbs. An occasional shouted, whispered, complained, retorted is a welcome relief, but a long string of hundred-dollar speech verbs calls attention to itself much more than plain old said ever did. Worst of all is modifying each said with an adverb: said sadly, said angrily, said wistfully.

          Solution: introduce brief bits of action into dialogue. Letting us know what characters are doing as they speak not only identifies speakers, but places readers fully in a scene. Instead of talking heads, we have living, breathing, moving human beings.

          For example, in my recent book about an aspiring seventh-grade writer, Write This Down, here are some instances where a speaker is identified simply by my showing what she is doing as she speaks:

 “That isn’t funny.” Now Kylee’s distressed enough that she puts down her knitting.

Or:

Kylee shrugs. “Okay.” But she crinkles her forehead in a skeptical way.

           One way to demonstrate this technique to your students is to create a short dialogue, written as in a play, just the words spoken. Here’s one I use when I teach:

“How are you?” 

“I’m fine. How about you?”

 “Just okay.”

“What’s the matter?”

“It’s my mom.”

“What about her?”

“I think she’s sick, like really sick.”

“Oh, no!”

          Have the students name the two characters. Now edit the dialogue (on the board) with each line tagged with, e.g., “John said” or Mary said.” Read it aloud so the students can hear how deadly this is. Next try replacing each said – every single one – with a fancy speech verb, or speech verb plus adverb. Read it aloud. Ouch!

          Ah, but now let the students offer suggestions about where the dialogue should take place: in a shopping mall, at the pool, in the school cafeteria? Once a setting has been established, a few of the speech tags can replaced by brief bits of action, specific to that setting. Vary their placement by sometimes having action precede a line of speech and sometimes follow it.

“How are you?” John asked Mary, as they walked toward the pool.

“I’m fine,” Mary said. “How about you?”

“Just okay.” John fiddled with the towel draped over his shoulders.

Mary stared at him. “What’s the matter?”

After a long pause, John said, “It’s my mom.”

“What about her?” A kid on the high board dove into the water with a huge splash, but Mary didn’t turn to look.

 “I think she’s sick, like really sick,” John whispered.

          “Oh, no!”

          Don’t let dialogue be “all talk and no action.” Small bits of interspersed action make the talking real. Action makes talkers come alive.

Claudia Mills is the author of over 50 books for young readers, including How Oliver Olson Changed the World (an ALA Notable Book of the Year) and The Trouble with Ants (which received a starred review in Publishers Weekly), as well as the Franklin School Friends series of chapter books from Farrar, Straus & Giroux. Claudia lives in Boulder, Colorado, with her family and her cat, Snickers. Visit her at www.claudiamillsauthor.com.

READER'S THEATER (Part 2)

by Mary Quattlebaum

In my last post (June 4, 2012), I mentioned Reader’s Theater as a great motivator for classroom reading and writing.  And since this is summer, it can also be a playful camp or family experience. Both the group performance and no-need-to-memorize aspects take the stress out of the reading/performing experience for most kids.

And they also love the writing part.

Storyteller/children’s author Aaron Shepherd offers detailed tips on adapting a picture book or story for Reader’s Theater. Here are the basic steps:  

1.  Look for a book (or scenes) with dialogue, action, and a number of characters.  Are there places where you might “create” a role to be filled by a large number of kids so that everyone might participate, not just the relatively fewer kids with bigger roles as primary characters.  A pet who makes noises, perhaps?  A crowd that repeats a particular refrain?  Or a repeating sound effect?

2.  Break kids into teams of 2 or 3 people each.

3.  Assign each team a section of the story.

4.  Have them identify narration vs. dialogue and then identify each bit of dialogue as belonging to a specific character.

 5.  Assign roles of narrator(s) and various characters.

6.  Read and have fun!

But how, you might ask, are students doing any writing if, essentially, they are adapting an already written text?

1.  They are learning to read more analytically for certain elements, in this case dialogue, narration, and gesture.

2.  They are making careful choices as to what/how/how much to include (for example, details of setting or characterization).

3.  They might take a story they’ve written earlier in the year and adapt it for Reader’s Theater, gaining insight into how to improve that first story in the process.

Adults writing for children can also benefit from #3, learning to create more dynamic picture books and stories by examining, performing, and then revising the dialogue/story in various drafts.

I recently saw a performance of a powerful book of poems, I Lay My Stitches Down by Cynthia Grady (Eerdmans 2012).  These poems are in the voices of fictional slaves of the 19^th century, which students took on at the middle school where Grady is a librarian. The resulting performance was stunning.

http://www.maryquattlebaum.com/

DIALOGUES AND TWO PERSON POEMS

by Mary Quattlebaum

Have you ever read dialogue that feels rambling and flat?  (Ha, sometimes I’ve written such dialogue and then, of course, had to revise.)  To help students think more carefully about the point of and voices in a piece of dialogue, try this:

*Have students make up one big and one very small character (for example, seagull and tiny crab, child and ant, cat and mouse).  One wants something that the other has (for example, the gull might want to eat the crab; or the ant might want child’s cupcake crumb).  What do they say to one another?  How are their voices different?  (For example, the gull might be rude and the crab very polite.  Or the ant, though tiny, might be very bossy and the child apologetic.)  What happens and how does the dialogue end? 

*Once students have written and revised their dialogues or two-speaker poems, have them pair up with someone in class and speak/perform the part of their two characters.  Have fun!

Below is an example of a two-speaker or dialogue poem. In “Encounter,” a girl and firefly have an imaginary conversation about their different experiences of firefly being caught by girl and then released.

                                Encounter

     Girl                                       Firefly

                                                                                                   

Quick leap,

turned wrist.

Bright dot

in my fist.

                                                  Night wide—

                                                  sharp snap!

                                                  I flicker

                                                  in a trap.

Gliding spark,

quiet flash:

go forth,

go fast.

                                                  Sudden window

                                                  opens high;

                                                  warm wind

                                                  whispers “fly.”

                    --by Mary Quattlebaum, Cricket magazine

www.maryquattlebaum.com