Found a weird trick for dialogue prompts at a writer's meetup in Portland

Last month at a cafe in Portland, this older writer showed me how she uses overheard restaurant chatter as raw dialogue prompts. She just jots down the most awkward or funny snippets and builds a scene around them. Has anyone else tried grabbing real conversations for their writing?

2 comments

2 Comments

danielr9916d ago

Read a blog post once where a writer kept a hidden recorder at a family dinner. Captured some brutally real arguments that turned into a whole chapter. Might steal that idea for my next story.

morganmartinez16d ago

Have you tried doing it without a recorder first though? I did this once and forgot to hit record, but still ended up with better dialogue just from paying close attention and scribbling notes in the bathroom. The realness comes from noticing the small stuff like someone's fork pausing mid-air during a tense pause, not just the yelling.