Class Prompt: Dialogue

[kasihya]

'Neil.'

'Mm ...'

'Neil ...'

'I'm listening. I'm listening and grading.'

'It's a piece of shit, it's just blobs of paint. Fail the kid.'

'I can't do that, Jack, she's seven.'

'Life is tough.'

'Try explaining that to a kid who still believes in Santa Claus.'

'...'

'Did you want something?'

'Maybe. I don't know if I should tell you right now. You're in Teacher Mode.'

'I'm listening. Do you know what this is supposed to be? I think it's a tree, but I had the kids copying The Sunflowers so I don't know where the tree came from.'

''From whence the tree came', you mean.'

'You're a pain in the ass, you know that?'

'I can't help it. The dangling participles bat at my soul like cat with a mouse. Pretty much exactly like a cat, in fact, speaking of cats.'

'When were we talking about cats?'

'... Since ... well ... I figured we should talk about cats. Really soon. Like now.'

'Excuse me, you bought us a cat?'

'Rescued a cat. I rescued a cat from the dumpster.'

'So you brought it - Jack, where did you put it?'

'It's a her, and she's in Percy's old carrier. I'm not letting her near the couch, I paid good money for it and she smells like fried chicken.'

'Wonderful, and what's this 'I'? I'm sure at least half of that couch is mine.'

'She doesn't have any ID tags, probably less than a year old ...'

'You should put up signs. She might have just wandered away and gotten trapped.'

'In a dumpster in a torrential downpour, that's likely.'

'It's raining?'

'...'

'All right. Billy Z. gets a B.' Chair legs scraping against the floor. 'Show me the kitty.'

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I don't think I'm going to use this one, because I can't seem to get the voices right. They're thing they'd say, but neither character has any dialogue style. Like, Kai has a very distinct way of speaking, even without the stutter. So does Nyali, and Tsuya, and Tanwen. Neil and Jack ... right now, they're amorphous and indistinct, now that I've actually started to think about characters' speech patterns. So I'm going to redo this exercise, but I like the idea that they have conversations like this.