My dialogue is as clean as my bathroom floor.

First day of Spring quarter today. Creative writing professor assigned us 2 pages of dialogue on the first day, due tomorrow. I feel like it's a way for her to separate the chaff.  I suck at writing dialogues, i always like to set mise-en scene too much, regardless; here it be

Michael Crossley
English 152-Jeffries
Opening dialogue
04/05/10



"I find it hard to write when I'm not inspired." The boy seated  next to the pretty girl at the bar said. He was a stranger, she noticed him walk in the door of the saloon alone around the time happy hour started. She was seated alone at the bar herself, now it looked as if he sat next to her on purpose. Great, she thought, here comes the line...
 Instead of some awkward pickup, he just sat there in his stool stoically, picking at the little pieces of paper around the edges of his beer label. After a few moments, she started to feel like an asshole for being so presumptuous. Something about the way he sat there made her want to ask him follow up questions to his opening, was he a writer? Like a paid one? The idea stimulated her and she found herself inventing back stories for the boy, before ultimately feeling silly in spite of herself.
 "What do you usually write?" She asked " And what usually inspires you?"
"Obituaries." He replied, not looking up from amber glow of his beer bottle in the fading sunlight. "That's what I usually write."
"Well, I would imagine that's not something that requires an awful lot of inspiration, you just look at the facts and condense them right?"
"I don't want to come across like an obituary will ever be seen as a glowing piece of true literature. But there is a vast difference between a good eulogy and a mere death notice." His hand raising from the bar top, gesturing for another beer, he continued "Sometimes it's the case where you want to leave a fitting tribute, the problem is that I'm writing them for strangers."
 She scanned the boys profile, looking at him truly for the first time since he walked in the door. Well dressed, clean shaven, nice, yet not expensive watch around his left wrist, he wore a sterling silver band on the middle finger of his right hand, the ring finger of his left hand was bare.

Crossley-02

She tried to use these details to fill in the void of questions she had about his character. She was hoping for a James Baldwin or Jerzi Kosinski, not a newspaper man. She had always had a thing for writers, and secretly fantasized about showing up in someones novel someday, thinly disguised with an altered name.
  "So you never did say what usually inspires you to write the obituaries."
 "Oh? I don't need inspiration for the obituaries, I just compile the facts, condense them, like you said."
"But you said..." She started, before he interrupted her to finish
"You asked what I usually write, Obituaries are what I usually write, for money, as a job. What I write for me, as in what my discipline is... Well, that's the short story, non-fiction. That's what I need inspiration to do correctly."
"I see." She said, scolding herself for again coming to judgement so suddenly. "And what do you usually do for inspiration on the stories?"
"I go to a bar, order some drinks, find a strange girl, tell her I write obituaries and see where we end up." He replied, obviously pleased with himself to finally get to his line.
She wanted to scream in frustration, or smack him across his smug little smile. "This works for you? This line where you just lay out all of the cards on the table like that?"
 She felt duped, like it would have been better for him to just walk in and say his line up front, without beating around the bush and laying down all of this back story, just because she was having drinks in the early evening didn't mean that she had all of this time to while away to be wasted like this. "These girls ever go home with you, after a little act like that?" She asked, trying not to sound vehement.
 "Not usually," he said "And that's not the point. The point is when I can't write, I have to get out of my house, out of my head.

Crossley-03

Starting a spontaneous conversation with a stranger gets me back in the mode where I can remember how people actually speak, interact. You performed admirably and I thank you." He placed a twenty dollar bill on the bar top as he rose up out of his stool.
 "For your drinks." He said, brushing past her to the door and into the ever deepening evening. It was almost full dark now, and the neons under the bottles began casting their glow up through all of the multiple colors of glass. A poor mans prism of opulent carnival colors.
 The girl used the twenty to buy another drink as she sat there wondering what the Hell had just happened, and not knowing if she should even be upset or not.