Blog #9: Get on the Bus, Gus

Find yourself in a public place and record, as verbatim as possible, a conversation you overhear. The point of this blog is to capture dialogue as realistically as possible, paying attention to how we really talk with one another in fragments, how we interrupt, how we meander in a conversation but quite often come back around.

Public transit is one of the best places to capture interesting, evocative details, particularly around rushhour, particularly at the back of the bus. If you aren't able to ride the bus, then any public place will do. You might scope the place and look for a particularly interesting pair of mouths talking. Or, and this would be more experimental, you could even record someone on their cell phone. That might be interesting.

Then, as you sit down to write your blog, make this into a scene. We'll want to know where we are, what's on the walls, how the place smells, when the dialogue might be interrupted/punctuated with small actions, how the people are transformed into characters, etc. You might even factor into the scene.  Have fun!