Strong dialogue is something we might be able to participate in in real life, but capturing it on the page requires significant thought and skill. It’s a notoriously difficult aspect of the writing craft and something agents and editors look out for when assessing the quality of a manuscript. So how can you capture conversations between your characters that are not only compelling, but drive your story forward?

Emma Claire Sweeney, award-winning novelist and director of the Ruppin Agency Writers’ Studio, will lead a new masterclass that will unlock the secrets of impactful dialogue. With her, you will work through a series of useful techniques that have the power to transform your dialogue in an instant.

By examining virtuoso conversations, you will glean tips for making your own dialogue sing. You will also be invited to ask questions about your characters and their relationships, such as:

What’s at stake during this exchange?
What strategies will they use to get what they want?
What is the relative status of the speakers?
What is the subtext?

You will experiment with a wide range of approaches, ultimately coming away with a valuable toolbox of techniques to choose from when you next need your characters’ exchanges to rise out of the page.

Course content

What is dialogue and why is it so important?
Your characters: who are they and what is their relationship to one another?
Assessing what’s at stake during an exchange between your characters
Strategies your characters might use to get what they want from an interacting
Examining the relative status of speakers
Exploring subtext

Tutor profile

Emma Claire Sweeney is the director of the Ruppin Agency Writers’ Studio, a nationwide mentoring scheme, and is also a lecturer in Creative Writing at the Open University. She was named as both an Amazon Rising Star and a Hive Rising Writer for her debut novel, Owl Song at Dawn (Legend, 2016), which went on to win Nudge Literary Book of the Year. She has also won Society of Authors, Arts Council and Royal Literary Fund awards, and has written for the likes of The Paris Review, TIME, and The Washington Post. Margaret Atwood described A Secret Sisterhood: The hidden friendships of Austen, Brontë, Eliot and Woolf (Aurum, 2017), the non-fiction book that Emma co-write with Emily Midorikawa, as a great ‘service to literary history’.

You will be sent a link to the webinar 2hrs before the start time of 6.30pm (GMT). Please email masterclasses@theguardian.com if you have not received the access link within one hour of the scheduled start time.

This masterclass is available globally. If you are joining us from outside the United Kingdom, please use this time zone converter to check your local live streaming time.

6.30pm GMT | 7.30pm CET | 10.30am PST | 1.30pm EST

All Guardian Masterclasses are fully accessible but please contact us at masterclasses@theguardian.com if you have any queries or concerns.

Full course and returns information on the Masterclasses website

How to write authentic dialogue: A practical workshop