Class Description

Speaking of Dialogue: Giving Each Character a Unique Voice for Every Situation Next to action, dialogue is the best way to reveal your characters' personality and intentions. Once they start speaking, we find out more about them and what they want. What they need. What they are willing to do to get it. In this two-hour workshop, award-winning author Howard Shrier shows you how to give each character a unique voice that reflects their background, education, profession and situation. Drawing on his experience as the author of seven books of fiction hailed for their masterful dialogue, Howard will show you how to write dialogue that sounds real and conveys emotion. He’ll also draw on his experience as a trained theater actor to share techniques used by playwrights and screenwriters who rely on dialogue to reveal character and move stories. You’ll learn how to avoid stagey dialogue and give each character a unique voice that reveals their personality, state of mind and intentions. You’ll consider every element that affects a person’s speech: their regional background, level of education and ethnicity; whether they are telling the truth or lying; getting to the point or stalling for time; drunk or sober; at rest or under stress; speaking to a friend or enemy, a superior or subordinate. You’ll discover ways to develop your ear for dialogue and test-drive the results. You’ll come away with a better understanding of how your dialogue can come alive in every situation, no matter who is speaking, and when it can be used in place of exposition. All sessions will be recorded and the recording made available to all registered participants. Bio: Howard Shrier is the author of six novels and one collection of stories, including four titles in the acclaimed Jonah Geller series. His debut novel Buffalo Jump, published by Random House/Vintage Canada in 2008, won the Crime Writers of Canada's award for best first novel. The sequel, High Chicago (2009), won the CWC award for best novel. Boston Cream received starred reviews in Publishers Weekly and Library Journal and a rare five-star review in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, while Miss Montreal was shortlisted for another CWC award. Howard’s 2025 novel The American Zone, set during construction of the Panama Canal in 1906, has been called “a masterpiece of historical crime fiction” by the Seaboard Review of Books.