Last Week #44 - Dialogue

At my writer's group last week, we had a prompt that I found really interesting.  Write a scene only in dialogue. To me, that meant not only the conversation between the characters, but also establishing the scene. How are they feeling? What are they doing? I tried to show that only through dialogue. This is a bit of what I came up with.

“What do I do? He’s been there all day.”

“Have you seen him? Has he come over?”

“No Anderson, he’s still at the neighbour’s.  Hold on, I’m going to put you on speaker…There.”

“Why am I on speaker?”

“I don’t want him to see me peek out of the window with a phone on my ear.”

“Are the lights in your house still off?”

“Yes, but it’s Sunday.  He has to know that I’m at home.  Where else would I be?”

“You could be out with your wonderful friend and co-worker.”

“That’s true...and I can hear you smiling.”

“Taryn, you’ve stopped returning his texts and calls, right?”

“Mostly.”

“Why do you sound so distant?”

“Sorry, I was just looking up at the grey clouds. They threaten rain, but nothing has happened.  I wonder if anything is going to happen.”

“Happen with the rain or happen with Ben?”

“Yes.”

“You’ve just fallen over onto your couch, haven’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Next time you meet one of you neighbour’s friends, what are you going to do?”

“Not go out with them.”

“And why is that?”

“Because they might turn out to be the smothering stalker type and when they are friends with the people next door, they can watch me come and go as much as they want.”

“That sounds as creepy and terrible as I thought it would. Why don’t you call the cop?”

“I can’t call the police because I think maybe this guys is nuts.  He hasn’t actually done anything.”

“I didn’t say cops, I said the cop.”

Trying to establish the scene using just the conversation was not easy. I think I did an okay job. I like what's there, but I think I will go back over it and put in some descriptive phrases and narration. I was inspired to make the conversation between two characters in my work-in-progress. I think it might be too light for the overall tone I am going for, but I can change that too. I wonder what this conversation will look like when I'm done with it.