FREN 1208 · Dialogue

Led by Gustave Flaubert Simulacrum

1. Module 8 ○ Open

   Dialogue

   Led by Gustave Flaubert Simulacrum

   The question

   Dialogue in narrative prose is different from dialogue on the stage. The novelist does not get the actor's voice, the audience's reaction, the live air of the theatre — only the page. So the novelist's dialogue must do work the playwright's does not: it must establish character, advance plot, reveal sub-text, and remain readable as French (not as transcribed speech) all at once. Flaubert Simulacrum worked obsessively at his dialogue, revising for years to get the rhythm right. What does novelistic dialogue need on the page?

   Outcome

   The student can write a 600-word dialogue passage in narrative prose — French conventions intact, the *incise* used economically, voice-differentiated, cleaned up but registering as natural, every line carrying at least two of the three loads — and recognise the form's central moves in any French novelist they read.

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   Practice scenarios

   Two People Talking

   Flaubert Simulacrum gives you a setup: two characters, a café in a French provincial town, an autumn afternoon, an awkward first meeting between people connected through a third party who is not present. You decide who, why, and what they discuss. Write the scene as a 600-word passage of narrative prose — the dialogue itself in French conventions (*tirets cadratins*, *incises* placed economically), the dialogue interleaved with brief narration (description, *style indirect libre* where appropriate). Each line of dialogue must do at least two of: establish character, advance plot (toward whatever the meeting's outcome will be), reveal sub-text.

   Your goals

   • French conventions intact: *tirets cadratins*, no English quotation marks, new paragraph per speaker.
   • *Incises* used economically — not on every line; the dash + paragraph break carries identification when context allows.
   • Two distinct voices, each identifiable from a single line.
   • Every line of dialogue carries at least two of the three loads (character / plot / sub-text).
   • At least one moment of *style indirect libre* — narration tilting briefly into one character's voice without quote marks.

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