Dialogue only challenge: tell a complete story in nothing but speech

[Forge37]

New craft challenge for the month. Write a complete story using dialogue ONLY, no narration, no he said she said tags, no stage directions, just voices on a page. Maximum 500 words, minimum two speakers, and the reader must be able to follow who is talking and what is happening from the speech alone

This is the hardest cheap trick in fiction and the most instructive one. Everything you normally lean on is confiscated, description, interiority, the narrator's helpful nudging, and what remains is the engine room, people revealing situation, character and conflict purely by what they choose to say and avoid saying

Tips from previous rounds for the brave, distinct speech patterns beat name tags, what characters DO NOT say carries more than what they do, interruptions and non answers are your action scenes, and the story should turn on something learned or decided in the speech itself, not off stage

Entries in the thread by month end, feedback after the deadline as usual, and one bonus round for the show offs, make one of your speakers a liar and let the reader catch it without any help from you

[StoneCold_99]

Attempted this once and discovered I had built my entire style out of the confiscated items, the withdrawal was educational and humiliating in equal measure

[Runner]

The liar bonus round is the actual masterclass hiding in the thread, catching a liar through speech alone means the reader does the detective work, which is the most flattering thing fiction can ask of them

[Midnight Aoife]

Question for the veterans, are things like pauses written as ellipses legal, or does that count as smuggled stage direction? The ethics committee is apparently busy this month

[Cheeky Shaun]

Ruling from precedent, the ellipsis is speech, the bracketed pause is direction, one is how people talk and the other is you sneaking back into the room

[Ryan84]

Two speakers minimum noted, but the real black belt version is THREE voices with no tags, distinguishing a trio by rhythm alone is the hardest thing I have ever attempted on a page

[CarlosBuddle]

Radio drama writers have been doing this professionally for a century, anyone attempting the challenge should listen to one great radio play this week as tuition, the craft is all there in the dark

[Wizard]

First draft report, my characters keep announcing the plot to each other like newsreaders, as you know our mother left the house to both of us. The exposition disease is REAL when narration is banned

[Louise5]

The cure for newsreader dialogue is conflict, people arguing never summarise fairly, make them fight over the will instead of explaining it and the exposition hides itself in the grievance

[DarkLantern]

Make them fight over it instead of explaining it might be the best free writing lesson this board has produced all year

[Di87]

Delighted to see interruptions listed as action scenes, my entire entry is two people finishing each other's sentences incorrectly and I have never had more fun inside 500 words