The Art of Eavesdropping: Writing Sizzling Dialogue and Believable Thoughts

This hands-on workshop will teach you to write the internal thoughts and compelling dialogue between your characters. We will discuss the six purposes of dialogue and how to fulfil each one, when to begin and end your dialogue, how to increase tension and conflict, and the common errors writers make when writing dialogue. We will then learn the 7 different purposes served by exposing your character’s thoughts, the three different types of thoughts, and when and how to properly introduce thoughts in your POV character. Come prepared to write as you will be doing short exercises practicing the skills you will learn throughout the workshop. Useful for both experienced and newer writers.

Jane Ann McLachlan has her Masters in English Literature and was a College professor before she became a full-time writer. She is the award-winning author of five novels spanning three genres: Walls of Wind, The Occasional Diamond Thief, and The Salarian Desert Game (science fiction written under the pen name J. A. McLachlan); The Sorrow Stone, The Lode Stone, The Girl Who Would Be Queen, and The Girl Who Tempted Fortune (medieval historical fiction); and Downriver Writing: The Five-Step Process for Outlining a Novel, as well as two University textbooks on Professional Ethics (non-fiction). She lives in Waterloo, Ontario with her husband. When she isn’t writing, teaching creative writing, or talking about writing, she may be reading, researching or travelling to the location of her next novel.