Look Who's Talking!

When you write a memoir about an event in your life… the trick is to fashion your memories into an engaging story. One way to do this is to add dialog!

Adding dialog to your memoir will make
it even more interesting!

Dialog reveals a character’s personality.

Dialog helps the reader understand character 
relationships in the story.

Dialog reveals conflicts and causes a reaction.

Dialogue increases the story’s pace and 
makes it more dynamic.

Here is a dialog between Calvin and Hobbes.

In comics like the one above, artists use speech bubbles to show who is speaking as well as what is being said. In written dialog, the rules are a little trickier.

Here's a movie to explain a little further...

More resources...
Quotation Marks Lesson
Quotation Marks Practice
Punctuation Help
"Speech Marks"

Long Division

When you write a memoir about an event in your life… the trick is to fashion your memories into an engaging story. One way to do this is to add dialog!

Here is a dialog between Calvin and Hobbes.

[click on the comic to enlarge it]

In comics like the one above, artists use speech bubbles to show who is speaking as well as what is being said. In written dialog, the rules are a little trickier.

Here's a movie to explain a little further...

Memoir Memory Map

mem·oir [mem-wahr]

noun  an account of one's personal life and experiences; an autobiography.

For the next three weeks, we are going to work on writing a memoir. You will complete the online lessons in Composition and we will share in Class Connect. On October 5th you will work with a partner to add pizazz to your story!

Your first assignment is to come up with an engaging topic to write about.

Draw a detailed map of your neighborhood.

Label your map:

Important places.
Where something happened.
Where kids gather.
 A danger spot you avoid.
 A favorite place.
 A secret place.
 Friend’s and neighbor’s houses.

As you draw, what memories come back to you?

Choose 3 memories you might want to write about.

WARNING: The song below will get stuck in your head for eternity.

Now, think about your top 3 memoir topics.

Which story do you know the most about?

Which story contains all 4 of these story elements?