news &writing dialogue

Gates Open - June 8, 2026

News, updates and Writing Dialogue

Hello writers and writing friends

The good news includes getting the air cast boot off my foot. My broken ankle is almost healed, and I don’t need the boot. I just need to be careful until “almost” becomes “fully”. Tomorrow I am heading to the lake and my first swim off the boat this summer. Summertime in the cottage country and lakes of the Haliburton Highlands in Ontario is my delight. I have written several short stories with this setting. I sent one into a contest and haven’t heard back. I don’t think they will like it, not quite a perfect fit, but no worries, I love this little story, and it will get published somewhere sometime. I believe in me. (Okay, sometimes I have doubts, but I do believe in me.)

  I am loving writing in scenes, not chapters. I know how to write scenes, and I know what I want to write. I have a plan, but the details are not all decided. I love the creativity that flows when I use this method. For example, I started one scene about the main character visiting the home of an older couple, and the story went elsewhere, surprising me when the main character is driven off the road in a snowstorm. Only I know why and who was driving the truck behind her. I love mystery writing. It’s fun, and when writing is fun, it flows and grows.

I am also sticking to my monthly and weekly output plan: two thousand words a week for a total of 8 thousand a month, and the draft will be finished by next February. I work best with goals and timelines. I like to push myself. Unfortunately, my 77-year-old body is starting to push back:)

I continue to write newspaper stories (approximately 1000 to 1200 words) under the banner I created: Writing on the Senior Side. Every two weeks comes up quickly, and I often pause and think, do I want to keep doing this? While I am thinking about it, I keep writing, and although I am not sure if it is widely or even narrowly read, it too is fun. My last submission is called Too Many Notes, and talks about how my life and my city of Toronto relate to Mozart.

I am a teacher. I love teaching - from my career in education to teaching my granddaughter to play Texas Hold 'em. I write this blog to continue to teach myself about the craft of writing, and hopefully, I am teaching one of you, too.  I spent three years on secondment at a Faculty of Education teaching teacher candidates, and it was a highlight of my work life. I think of all of us who blog and take courses as writing coaches working with writing candidates. Learning together is both rewarding and exciting. Lately, I have had the same pause as with my newspaper stories: Does anyone read my blog, and do they gain any learning or even contemplation from doing so? Will I keep going? Yes, because I am reaffirming my knowledge and improving my craft when I investigate or revisit these writing topics. It would be nice to get feedback. I wonder if instead of a blog, I should just post this on Substack? What do you think?

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WRITING DIALOGUE

Every course I took in Creative Writing at U of T included a class on dialogue, and almost every author/instructor provided Ernest Hemingway’s Hills Like White Elephants as an example to read and discuss. Usually, I don’t like repetition in courses that I am paying for, but revisiting this short story felt like a renewal and a tweaking of my understanding and quest to write better dialogue. You can find the story online. Here is a short excerpt.

Ernest Hemingway, Hills Like White Elephants

“Well,” the man said, “if you don’t want to you don’t have to. I wouldn’t have you do it if you didn’t want to. But I know it’s perfectly simple.”

     “And you really want to?”

     “I think it’s the best thing to do. But I don’t want you to do it if you really don’t want to.”

      “And if I do it, you’ll be happy, and things will be like they were and you’ll love me?”

      “I love you now. You know I love you.”

      “I know. But if I do it, then it will be nice again if I say things are like white elephants, and you’ll like it?”

     “I’ll love it. I love it now but I just can’t think about it. You know how I get when I worry.”

      “If I do it you won’t ever worry?”

     “I won’t worry about that because it’s perfectly simple.”

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I love the way the female dialogue is questions, and the male has the answers and is obviously in control.

If the course had a class on dialogue, it also had a writing dialogue assignment. One was to write a short paragraph-length dialogue beginning with a bad dialogue prompt and improving and changing it. The instructor chose mine as an example of excellent dialogue. In another, we had an assignment to write a short story, two pages, approximately 500 words, of dialogue. Just dialogue. Again, the feedback I received was that it was excellent. And still I don’t feel like I am getting it “right” most of the time. I have also had feedback from my writing group, etc., that said my dialogue was “stilted”. I have decided I am “on again, off again” when writing dialogue, so revisiting it here in my blog is a perfect opportunity to learn and consolidate, and then put writing great dialogue into practice.

As mentioned previously, one of my sources for learning is the book Bird by Bird (25th Anniversary Edition) by Anne Lamott. I reread the chapter on dialogue and highlighted a few parts that spoke to me, and I am sharing those here:

• “Dialogue is more like a movie than it is like real life, since it should be more dramatic. There’s a greater sense of action.” - p. 62

• “There are a number of things that can help when you sit down to write dialogue:

First, sound your words. Read them aloud. p.62

Second, remember that you should be able to identify each character by what he or she says. Each one must sound different from the others. And they should not all sound like you. p.63

Third, you might want to try putting together two people who more than anything else in the world wish to avoid each other…” p.63

• “Good dialogue gives us the sense that we are eavesdropping, that the author is not getting in the way…” p.64

• “Good dialogue encompasses both what is said and what is not said….so let these characters hold back some thoughts and, at the same time, let them detonate little bombs…” p.64

• “…you create these characters and figure out little by little what they say and do, but all this happens in a part of you to which you have no access - the unconscious. That is where the creating is done. We start with our stock characters, and our unconscious provides us with real, flesh and blood, believable people.” p.68

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Well, I am reenergized to write excellent dialogue. This revisit has been worthwhile for me, and I hope it was for you.

Until next time,

Gail