I'm developing a piece that shows the impact that interiority has on the pacing of a dialogue exchange. I want to show how the countermelody, or the second, interior voice, informs the silences--especially those that result from a withholding of a truth in the moment.
The main example comes from Danzy Senna's Triptych, and I'll review three versions of the same scene she includes in the story. All three tell similar stories, but I want to have a conversation about how the changes in timing and rhythm affect the feeling of the moment.
The first example has no interior access other than what's implied through gesture. The second a single line of interiority. The third features an extended riff of a withheld truth. The real-time moments are all the same length, but the interior clocks are different.
I want to present in a way that informs early drafting and revision as the conference writers decide between brevity and elaboration during a conversation or scene.
Ravi Howard received the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence in 2008 for the novel Like Trees, Walking, a fictionalized account of a true story, the 1981 lynching of a black teenager in Mobile, Alabama. Howard was a finalist for both the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award and... Read More →
