'Action Out Loud: Dialogue and Character' with Jacob Paul

Dialogue is the rare instance in which character action is relayed directly, and yet its power comes from the use of the sound-based tools common to poetry. In this two-hour workshop, we'll begin by thinking about how a character's line of dialogue constitutes an action they've undertaken in pursuit of a specific objective in a scene and what that means for character conflict. We'll then explore how to pattern character lines both to build tension and perform characters' relative power towards each other. From there, we'll move on to the ways the development of a character's phrasing and word choices - what I like to call the character's figurative palette - brings the character and the character's objectives into focus. Finally, time allowing, we'll talk about some special cases of dialogue, such as the uses of elliptical structures and soliloquies.