Experimenting with Voice and Dialogue Complete the following exercise to think through the language your characters
use and the relationships they demonstrate through dialogue.

The Secret
1. Choose any two professions for two imaginary characters.

2. Give the two characters a secret that they share with one another. As you
might imagine, neither of them would reveal that secret aloud, but they
might discuss it. (To really challenge yourself, you might also come up with
a reason that their secret must be a secret: Is it socially unacceptable to talk
about? Are they liable to get in trouble if people find out? Will they ruin a
surprise?)

3. Write an exchange between those characters about the secret using only
their words (i. e., no “he said” or “she said,” but rather only the language
they use). Allow the secret to be revealed to the reader in how the
characters speak, what they say, and how they say it. Pay attention to the
subtext of what’s being said and how it’s being said. How would these
characters discuss their secret without revealing it to eavesdroppers?
(Consider Ernest Hemingway’s “Hills Like White Elephants” as a model.)

4. Draw a line beneath your dialogue. Now, imagine that only one of the
characters has a secret. Write a new dialogue in which one character is
trying to keep that secret from the other. Again, consider how the speakers
are communicating: what language do they use? What sort of tone? What
does that reveal about their relationship?