The Book of Dialogue: How to Write Effective Conversation in Fiction, Screenplays, Drama, and Poetry

201 Pages·2004·12.67 MB·English

by  Lewis Turco

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The Boole of Dialogue
Other Boo/es by Lewis Turco
The Green Maces ofAutumn, Voices in an Old Maine House, 2002
A Boole of Fears: Poems, with Italian translations by Joseph Alessia, 1998
Bordello:A Portfiflio of Poems and Prints, with George O’Connell, 1996
Emily Dickinson,W oman qf Letters: Poems and Centosfrom Lines in Emily
Dickinson’ 5 Letters, 1993
The Shifting Web: New and Selected Poems, 1989
The Fog: A Chamber Opera in One Act, with Walter Hekster, 1987
The Compleat Melancholicle, Being a Sequence of Found, Composite, and
Composed Poems Based Largely upon Robert Burton’s The Anatomy of
Melancholy, 1985
American Still Llfes, 1981
Pocoangelini:A Fantography 8 Other Poems, 1971
The Inhabitant, 1970
Awaken, Bells Falling: Poems 1959—1967,1 968
First Poems, 1960
The Boole of Forms,T hird Edition, 2000
The Boole cf Literary 72mm, 1999
Shaking the Family Tree/1 Remembrance, 1998
The Public Poet, 1991
The New Boole of Forms, 1986
Visions and Revisions of American Poetry, 1986
Poetry/In Introduction Through Writing, 197 3
The Boole (norms:/l Handbook qf Poetics, 1968
Lewis Turco
T H E B O O K O F
D I A L O G U E
HOW to Write Effective
’ Conversation in Fiction,
Screenplays, Drama, and Poetry
University Press of New England
Hanover and London
University Press of New England, 37 Lafayette St., Lebanon, NH 03766
© 1989, 2004 by Lewis Turco
Original cloth edition published in 1989 by Writer’s Digest Books
First University Press of New England paperback edition‘ 2004
All rights reserved
Printed in United States of America
54321
Library of Congress Cataloging—in—Publication Data
Turco, Lewis.
The book of dialogue : how to write effective conversation in fiction,
screenplays, drama, and poetry / Lewis Turco.
p. cm.
ISBN 1—58465—361—2 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Dialogue. 2. Fiction—Authorship. 3. Motion picture authorship.
4. Playwriting. 5. Poetry—Authorship. I. Title.
PNI551.T85 2004
808.3'96—dc22 2003023754
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
“Bordello” was published as a limited edition portfolio of PoemPrints,
poems by Lewis Turco, prints by George O’Connell, Oswego: Grey Heron/
Mathom, and is reprinted here by permission of the author. © 1971, 1996,
2004 by Lewis Turco, all rights reserved.
“The Man in the Booth” by Lewis Turco originally appeared in Plough-
slzares, x22—3, I984.
“The Museum of Ordinary People” first appeared in the anthology
American Fiction 2, edited by Michael C. White & Alan Davis, New York:
Birch Lane Press, 1991.
“An Old—Fashioned Kind of Guy” was published in New Times, No. 678,
March 21, 1984, and is reprinted here by permission of the author © 1984,
2004 by Lewis Turco, all rights reserved.
(Continued on page 184)
For my sweethearts,
Jean, Melora, Jessima,
and, as of 12 September 2003,
Phoebe Louise.
Contents
Introduction
Chapter 1 Definitions
Savants I3
Bordello 18
Chapter 2 Speech in Narration 26
An Old—Fashioned Kind of Guy 29
One Sunday Morning 4 5
The Man in the Booth 54
Pleasant Dell 61
Chapter 3 Diction
75
Scot on the Rocks 90
Chapter 4 Types of Speech
110
Pocoangelini 7 I 30
Barrow Yard I 33
Shipmates I 37
Chapter 5 Genre Dialogue 164
Murgatroyd Tries Again 167
The Museum of Ordinary People 176
Index 185

The Boo/e qf Dialogue