Monday, April 9, the Bowers Writers House welcomed adjunct faculty of English Jennifer Besse and Assistant Director of Academic Advising Curtis Smith for a craft talk and a joint reading session.

At Elizabethtown College, Besse teaches Latin and classical mythology, and Curtis Smith has taught EN 100 in the past.

At the event, Smith and Besse offered a writing workshop in Bowers Writers House at 3:30 p.m. The topic of the workshop focused on writing dialogue in prose fiction.

They engaged a lot with the students who attended to get a feel for their knowledge and interest in writing.

Besse and Smith gave examples of certain works of dialogue they feel best represents the impact it can have between characters in short stories and what is seen in the interaction between the characters in movies.

Smith gave the students some advice when writing.

“There should be a new change or direction in the story from the beginning to end of the story,” Smith said.

“Dialogue is an effective way of bringing out the concept of characterizations without being told directly. The best thing writers should do is avoid backstory or expository writing where the characters are telling the story. Also, writers should think about the way the story is being told through a certain point of view,” Besse said.

“It is important to have room silence. It can be so powerful to allow the reader to make their own interpretation of what is being said between the characters in the story,” Smith said. “Dialogue can be effective in the way that it is delivered in the story by the tone of the person’s voice.”

“Having the characters do double duty is extremely effective to get a sense of characterization by having the characters talk while they are doing something,” Smith continued.

According to Smith and Besse, writing is a process that starts with waiting for inspiration to strike, finding how to start the story and then let the rest of the story build from there.

When completing a story, the best way to proceed before it is published, according to Smith and Besse, is to put the story away for a while, so that you can come back to it later on with a fresh pair of eyes and a new perspective on the piece and see if there are any new changes that need to be made or just to see if the story will work.

Students got hands-on experience with dialogue by creating their own. They were each given two different characters with different backgrounds and a scenario in which the characters interact with each other. The challenge was to create a dialogue between the characters.

Students who attended the craft talk gave their feelings towards the experience.

“It was very informative, eye-opening and fun,” said sophomore Sierra Rosa.

Sophomore Eli Kuklinski shared a similar feeling, as well.

“It was really great and very helpful,” Kuklinski said. “I am glad that there were not many people here so it could be more engaging in a small group.”
Rosa gave her thoughts about the effect that the craft talk had on her interest of writing.

“It increased my interest for writing,” Rosa said. “It taught me that writing takes time, and it is not something that can be gone within a couple of months.”

Rosa also stated that she liked the creative writing exercise.

“I really liked it, it opened my eyes to different genres,” she said.

During the reading part of the night, Besse and Smith read a part of their book to the people in attendance.

Besse started the reading by introducing her mother who was the inspiration for her book named “Finding Moses.”

Smith’s most recent novel, “Lovepain,” was published a few months ago. Smith’s motivation for his novel was that he wanted to write in the character’s mindset. It is not a long book, and the most important aspect of his writing is to keep a pace and rhythm.

This can help him in the end because he could be at 8,000 words but could condense it to about 4,000 to 6,000 words to show enough of the character’s mindset and to bring out enough emotion in the story.

Before each speaker read, they told the audience a little background of the story and the part that they were going to read. At the end of each reading, they paused for questions from the audience.