Event

A Lesson in Dialogue

The first fact of dialogue in writing is this: it bears little connection to real life speech.
So how does dialogue work? What does it do in story? Mary Jo Melone will guide you as you look at dialogues function to drive plot and reveal character, and you will learn how to put these ideas to work in your own fiction.

About the Instructor:
Mary Jo Melone's stories have appeared in the Iron Horse Literary Review, 2 Bridges Review, Crack the Spine, Gris-Gris, and Philadelphia Stories. She was a contributor to the linked flash fiction collection, 15 Views of Tampa Bay, in the second volume of Corridor, published by Burrow Press in Orlando. Her non-fiction essays have appeared in the Tampa Review. She received her MFA from USF in 2011 and last year was a writer-in-residence at Rivendell Writers Colony in Sewanee, TN. Since 2013, she has been an annual participant in the Yale Writers Conference. She is also a linguist, and in a time long ago, was a metro columnist for what they now insist on calling the Tampa Bay Times. As a columnist for the Tampa Bay Times, Mary Jo talked to a lot of people, which helped her develop her ear for dialogue in fiction. At the moment, she is working on a collection of short stories set in Florida.

Saturday, March 18 (1:00-3:00pm)