In this workshop, we will use a dialogue creation tool to explore a step by step process of creating realistic dialogue that advances the plot and maintains dramatic tension. Through the use of emotional arcs, subtext and subtle exposition, we will each create an excerpt of back and forth dialogue between two of our chosen characters which will  convey their desires and emotional states while delivering plot points with dramatic pace. The more energy and authenticity we can convey within our characters' dialogue, the more our audience  becomes invested and immersed within our story world.

Claire Bennett started her professional writing career at the old Pebble Mill Studios in Birmingham, where she wrote audio drama. For BBC R4 she wrote The Afternoon Play and two Woman’s Hour serials. Weirdly, decades before podcasts and extreme short form, she wrote a One Minute Soap for The Mo Dutta Radio Show on Radio 2. She left the world of industry and commerce having been given the confidence and tools to do so by Sam Boardman Jacobs and Sue Wilson at Totleigh Barton, where, in the summer of 1995, she loved Arvon’s Writing for Radio course.

She now writes television drama, theatre, short stories, and poetry for performance and is returning to audio.

As a core writer on the BBC Daytime Drama Doctors, Claire had many nominations and won awards, including a Writers Guild of Great Britain Award, a National Soap Award and a Royal Television Society award. She has written for Crossroads, Eastenders and Holby City. She has a drama series in development at the BBC with a duo of peerless collaborators. She is working with Open Theatre in Birmingham and The Ruskin Mill Land Trust to stage an adaptation of her story Ten Shillings Well Spent with a cast that includes members of the neurodiverse community.