"Wanna see my nose flute?" (A Lesson in Dialogue)

In a couple months, I will have completed my MFA in Creative Non-fiction from Cedar Crest College's Pan-European Program. (The school is in PA, but the 2-week annual residencies are in various cities in Europe.) I started in Barcelona in 2014, then Vienna/Bratislava last summer, and the big finish will be in Ireland in July.

The Magic Fountain of Montjuïc. It lights up at night like the Bellagio.

At the residency weeks in Barcelona, our days were divided up by classes, workshops, and tutorials, whereas during the year, my mentor-ship classes were be completed online. We had monthly writing deadlines, webinars, reading-assignments and critical essays, and professional feedback and line-edits (etc.).

Palau Ramon Berenguer el Gran

In Spain, I met Jake Lamar. Now, he is my thesis adviser.
The first word that comes to mind is happy. The man is genuinely happy. A pleasant, positive, smiling fellow--putting to rest all the rumors that real writers are depressed recluses. Picture the opposite of Edgar Allen Poe.

"How did you get started as a writer?" My friend Kathy and I asked after cajoling with him for almost two weeks. And he told us about working for TIME, writing a memoir, and moving to Paris on a grant, and never leaving. Some prodding wrenched out the details:

He's Bronx born, Harvard educated, and Jake's debut book, a memoir about his absent father called Bourgeois Blues, earned him the Lyndhurst Foundation Prize, awarded to, oh, you know, people like Toni Morrison and Cormac McCarthy! What. The. What. I love this program.

The Cathedral in Gothic Square, BCN

One of my favorite classes was the one Jake taught on dialogue.

Here are my take-aways:

• Be aware of the weird music of how people speak. 
• Every character is a composite. 
• Date everything you write. Revisions too. 
• Write a story off of a voicemail. (Guess who is now self-conscious of her voicemails? This girl.)
• The details are never as important as the overall feel. 
• Kill the darlings, as they say. 
• Writing exercise: begin a story with the line, "I love you, but..." (My sentence read, "I love you, but I draw the line with at-home enemas.")
• From Jake's memoir and something his dad once said: "I'm an escapee from a garbage can."

Getting fresh with Gaudi at the Parq Guell Museum

Here are bits of dialogue I heard or recalled after his lesson:

• "Wanna see my nose flute?"
• "You don't want to be sued by the Village People."
• "Teens have the proclivity to...and the hormones to..."
• A Spanish man strums an air guitar, says, "tacka tacka tacka". 
• "Language is archaeology." 
• "I am telling my son how to build the Guggenheim, but I am not telling anyone's son." --Cesar Martinell
• "The only Sting that comes to mind is 'do-do do, da-da da da dad'." --Aleksander Hemon
• "Once upon a time" is the promise of something extraordinary.
• Pauses are ok, but story needs fuel. 
• "I was sitting next to you last night at dinner and you had a...loaf of meat?" Fred asked.
• "It was more of a log." 
• "But you liked it."
• "For newspapers [in Spain], der is an agreement not to speak about suicides." --Ramon Olle
• "Unfortunately dey pendulum is swinging from Christ to none." --Ramon Olle
• "But how will I know what everything is?"

Oh, yeah. And we got to do readings of our WIPs. 

My writing challenge to you: Listen to strangers on the train, in the store, at church and jot down the pieces of dialogue that stand out. Sometimes little nuggets like that can spur larger narratives. 

Happy writing. 

Rena

Blog: prose-spective.blogspot.com

Twitter and Instagram: @renasprose