Here’s an assignment that asks you to pay attention to the way people talk to each other.

Write a five-minute conversation, which is usually about five typed pages in dialog form.

FOR MORE ON SCRIPTS CLICK ME:

A sample script by Dr. Axelrod with lesson.  

Workshopping your dialog.

Student's sample script with instructor's workshop comments.

Make the conversation between just two people. Two—not more than two—allows you to concentrate on a meaningful exchange as compared to the "dance" or interchange between a number of people who, given the short script, would each necessarily have less to say.

Place them together in a setting where they can face each other and talk. That is, don’t have them talk on the phone or just drive in a car. People who can look each other in the eye have the potential to make stronger contact between each other. Also, consider this an exercise in "stage" not screenplay writing, so that the place/setting for the conversation should be the same for the entire five minutes: no change of scene/location.

The conversation should begin and end in five minutes, real time, straight through. without any break or jump in time: no blackouts, curtains, shifts such as "an hour later," or "next day."

Just have the people talk! Don’t use:

Cues, such as (laughing) (crying) (shouting)

Blocking, such as (standing) (jumping up and down) (waving his arms)

Camera shots, such as (long shot) (close up) (rack-focus)

Lighting, costumes, props.

Here are some hints to make the dialog better. Usually life’s little conversations, even important talks, being un-scripted, are not so clever, may be interrupted, as often don’t come to any resolution. Think of your dialog as "life made better." You get to go back and fill in a better line for that moment in a confrontation or argument. You get to practice the joke until it really is funny. You get to refine life to make it more entertaining. Work and rework your dialog until the every line of the conversation is really clever or interesting or at least moves the conversation ahead.

While the assignment does not require that you "solve a problem," generally, drama is built on conflict and resolution. If you give the two people a problem or a purpose, you can create a more dynamic conversation. Five minutes of idle gossip skipping from thing to thing would not usually expand into an interesting play. Two people trying to work out their feelings to save their relationship—maybe that is "theatre."

There is, of course, a good "double up" in this assignment and in your writing good prose fiction (aka story writing).  Go to the link to: PUT DIALOG IN YOUR STORY.

Here's an interesting link that combines writing a journal and dialog writing! You may be able to put your two tasks together. Double credit! Take a look: www.writingthejourney.com/exercises/dialog.htm