Striking up a Dialogue

The past couple of months I've been working on a writing project. A few weeks ago I sent an early draft of it to a writing buddy, and when she sent it back to me nearly every place there were people she said "Again, I want to see actual dialogue here."

After the initial frustration of wondering what was wrong with my dialogue, and reading a few examples of what dialogue should look like, I set to work rewriting every snippet of conversation into "actual" dialogue. It was frustrating as hell to rewrite all my dialogue. Complaining to my writing buddy about what a pain it is to write dialogue, I stared at the same paragraphs until I couldn't see straight trying to turn them into something my writing buddy wouldn't give me grief about.

I complained a lot, and gave my writing buddy a good deal of grief for essentially telling me my dialogue wasn't real. I think I even told her I hated writing dialogue, but in the end I was glad she pushed me. Somewhere between being ready to cry in frustration over lousy dialogue, and sending my writing buddy a new draft with updated dialogue, I saw my story coming together like I've never seen my own writing coming together before.

I've never really tried to write dialogue before. I've never really tried to write anything before. I've written things, for school or just because, and been proud of some of the things I've written, but I've never had to work this hard or try so much to write something and not given up on it. In the past if something was really truly challenging to write, or if someone pointed out flaws in my writing, I was quick to decide whatever I was writing was just crap anyway.

With lots of encouragement from a few writing buddies, I challenged myself to write more than ever, and then pushed myself to make it even better. There were moments I didn't know how I could make it through the frustrations of rewriting, but the result was incredible. I still can't believe how much a little rearranging and working on the dialogue pulled my project together.

After working so hard it's amazing to see this coming together. It's wonderful to see the result of the work I put into this, and as much as I might have complained about it, I'm so grateful for friends who push me, and glad I've taken on this challenge.