Prewriting: Dialoguing

Dialoguing asks that you interact on a personal level with your topic. Just as dialogue captures a conversation between two people, dialogues involve conversing with your topic. First you need two characters. You may imagine two particular people or two sides of an issue, or you may choose to speak as yourself to your topic or aspect of your topic. You may want to label the speakers "1" and "2," or give them names, to help you keep track of who's speaking as you write. Try to keep the dialogue moving fast: don't get bogged down in rehearsing or planning responses. If you get stuck, have one of the speakers ask the other a question.

Speaker 1: I'm concerned about the atrocious grammar I hear whenever I turn on the radio.

Speaker 2: What do you mean by "atrocious grammar"? I don't hear anything wrong, What radio station to you listen to, anyway?

Speaker 1: I'm not surprised that you don't hear anything wrong: you've gotten used to bad grammar because, apparently, too few artists pay attention to or care about proper English. For instance, Paula Cole incorrectly uses the subjective pronoun as the object of a preposition when she sings "for I." Everlast only sporadically uses the possessive pronoun; the rest of the time, the lyrics rely on personal pronouns like "they" instead of the correct possessive pronoun like "their." How much time do you have? I could go on and on.

Speaker 2: Okay, I see your point, but why does it upset you so much? Aren't these artists entitled to a little lyric license? I think some bend the language to achieve rhyme, maybe others for effect. Either way, they probably know they're making a mistake.

Etc.