Hello, friends. Lovely for you to make it out here. Today I have a dialogue spine for you. It’s a writing exercise that I first heard about on the blog of one of my absolute favourite novelists, Scott Westerfeld. I’ve been feeling a little shy/daunted about writing prose — I have, in the meantime, been making EXCITING GREAT STRIDES in the realm of OUTLINING! PLOTTING! WORLDBUILDING! HOLY SHIT IT’S HAPPENING?IT’SHAPPENING! — which seems like a perfect time to try out a dialogue spine.
A dialogue spine is just dialogue, nothing else. Following in Mr Westerfeld’s footsteps, I’m using quote marks to denote one character’s speech and omitting them for the other.
Verdict: SUPER FUN to write! An excellent thing to try when you’re feeling daunted and like everything is hard. The novelty of the format is excellent for my brain. It’s very low-pressure, very specific, very conducive to the mindset of ‘don’t obsess or try to perfect it, just make something’ — in my experience, at least. Go try it! Increase the sample size if ya want. (I want everyone to be a writer.)
Oh, and on the note of shout-outs/recommendations — I’ve been using StimuWrite lately, which is a fantastic word processor if you’ve got a particular flavour of neuro-hipsterism (in my case: ADHD). For me, it makes writing lovely and relatively effortless, much like the AlphaSmart does.
ANYWAY. Here’s the dialogue spine! I enjoyed writing it a great deal.
Tell me what you think! How clearly can tell what’s going on? I’m omitting explanations/context so as not to ruin the integrity of this experiment.
Enjoy! … ? … :)
‘Kilka told you then, huh?’
What the fuck is your problem?
‘Oh! Kitty’s got her claws out, does she?’
Are you drunk?
‘What gave it away?’
Jesus. Is it true?
‘Is what true, Sashka?’
Don’t fucking call me that now. You know what I mean. Answer the question, you’re a little too fucking old to be playing dumb.
...
‘Yes.’
What?
‘You heard me. Yes, it’s true. I tried to cheat on you with Killian; I started what you saw. He stopped me.’
...
‘What? Did you not want to know? Did you — did you have some shred of hope that he was lying, trying to throw me under the bus in order to protect himself? A laughably implausible notion that you held onto, because at least that would mean it was him who was the asshole and not me, your — girlfriend?’
…
Ex-girlfriend.
...
‘Oh, very witty!’
I’m serious. Go fuck yourself.
‘Gladly.’
...
Seriously? That’s all? No explanation, no apology, no —
‘What do you want from me, Sasha? Not to sound like a broken record, but I never wanted a girlfriend, and you —’
Stop fucking saying that like it’s an excuse for being a fucking dickhole of a person! What the fuck? ‘I never wanted a girlfriend’, like that’s some kind of remotely acceptable justification? If you didn’t want a relationship then just fucking break up with me! Or maybe even do one better and don’t ask me to be yours in the first place! There are options, Rae! There are options, ones other than ‘cheat on my girlfriend with her ex’, a concept that is not nearly as astonishingly difficult to grasp as you manage to make it look.
...
‘It’s not an excuse.’
What?
‘I’m not trying to excuse a thing when I tell you I never wanted a girlfriend. I’m saying it because it’s a fact, one that I’d dearly love for you to get through your thick fucking skull, because it was true then and it’s true now — I don’t want you.’
...
And to think I ever wanted you to.