This is my entrance to the fast and furious task of the first day of the festival. The festival challenges writers to write a publication based on a creative message.
This time, the challenge is about dialogue and is divided into two tasks.
Task 1:
In your post, take what you learn about each of the three characters from the dialogue in the extract below and then develop them until you have a paragraph describing the character more fully.
A woman in a restaurant whispers to her friend:
"You know who that is over there, don't you?"
The other woman surreptiously glances at the other table:
"No, who?"
"That's just it, she's had so much work done you don't recognise her. That's Betty Grainger."
"No!"
"Yes, she's had her nose done, cheeks lifted, even a hair transplant."
"Whatever for?"
"She's going into politics."
"Seriously, that's really her?"
What do you learn about each of the three characters? How old do you think they are? What kind of life-style do they lead? Have they got a job? Where do they live? Do they have a family or friends? What do they wear? Have they got a secret in their past? Do you like them? Tell us all about them in your post - a paragraph for each character.
Taken from: The Ink Well Fast and Furious Festival - Day One
My job:
Paty Smith: She boasts of having studied at prestigious universities; she has even received training at the home of famous coaches. She tries to discourage people from attending her undernourished workshops. In them she often talks about the importance of sincerity and living no matter what others say or think. She is very extrovert and rarely keeps her mouth shut. Her favorite passion is to generate controversy and to assume that there is always an enemy behind her failed plans even when no one is paying attention. She always makes sure she has a companion, whom she tries to make feel special until they say goodbye, at which time she remembers what bothers her about that person and discusses it with someone else when she's not there.
Clara Patterson: She's a little shy. She is married and has two children. She's a devoted mother. She admires and loves her husband, who is almost always out of town for work. Clara doesn't like the idea of going out of her house much. She does it at the insistence of Paty, who tries to sell her on the idea of the need to enjoy every moment no matter what.
Betty Grainger: Journalist by profession. Although sometimes she thinks that maybe she would have been a good athlete. Probably a volleyball player, one of her sports passions in high school before the appearance of chickenpox, when she began to feel ugly. Her history teacher led her to admire the law and wanted to be a lawyer. Then came the separation of her parents, a situation that depressed her and made her even more self-absorbed. She finished high school in the most mediocre way. She did not even attend the celebration events. She lost the few friends she had made. She spent almost a whole year locked up in her house doing nothing but watch TV, read pink fiction books, listen to sad music from the eighties and think about a destiny beyond that reality that had reached her. Until one day, when she met with her mother and younger brother in the living room of the house, watching TV, and noticing the attention that everyone was paying to what the announcer was saying, she understood that she wanted to be a journalist, perhaps to get people's attention, to know more than people, but above all to know before people. She thought about that power and she liked it. When she was entering her third year, she took different jobs that allowed her to pay for her studies. She started as a cashier in a fast food restaurant and ended up writing all sorts of slogans and slogans for an advertising company. She became passionate about print journalism; notions that guided her life, crowned, finally, by a rare taste for the detective novel, initiated by one of her professors, who, passionate about the subject, suggested to her the readings of Raymond Chandler, from whom she often quotes unrecognizable phrases in the journalistic texts she writes. The knowledge of the marginal world and the violence that spreads to different social scenarios motivated him to venture into the world of politics.
Task 2
Write a short dialogue, like the one above, no more than 70-100 words, where two characters are talking about a third one. What can you reveal about your characters in your dialogue?
Taken from: The Ink Well Fast and Furious Festival - Day One
My job:
Both looked out the window at the city and the setting sun.
–It's about to get dark, –he said.
–Yes, from here the city is a spectacle," she says and slices a piece of bread on the plates. The sunlight is reducing," she adds, "and Caracas seems to be starting to burn in little flames. The poles, the store windows, the neon signs, the car headlights. Everything contributes to keep the city illuminated.
–How poetic, –he says, as she searches in her purse for a cigarette; when she tries to light it, he points out:
–Another little flame that contributes to your city's fire –and he points to the cigarette in his mouth, which makes her reconsider her desire to smoke.
As she puts the cigarette away she takes control of the cutlery and starts to bring some food to his mouth as he lies on a deck chair.
–Try it, –he says.
–Thank you, –he says as he chews and approves of his taste with his thumb up.
The initial proposal is to work for about twenty-five minutes, but it took me longer than that. In the first part, I spent more time thinking about the characteristics of the characters than anything else.
The second task was a little simpler. And it gives me room to think of a slightly more elaborate story.
In the end, I realize something really illustrative: how important the dialogues are in a story, either to be able to say more about the characters without necessarily having the intervention of the narrator; at the same time, the importance of the dialogues leads us to think about how fragile our story can become if it is not well used.
Thank you for reading. I look forward to your comments.