Dialogue is the jewel in the crown of much fiction. Why is it so hard to make that jewel shine? Drawing on her most recent book, The Hidden Machinery: Essays on Writing, the novelist Margot Livesey will discuss the difficulties of writing natural seeming dialogue that both reveals character and advances plot, and she’ll suggest some strategies for making scenes more resonant. Good dialogue shows the reader what cannot be told, but how do authors make the choice to dramatize, or summarize? Bring a scene from something you’ve written to re-examine in the light of her suggestions.
