In the last writing workshop on February 1st, we talked about the role of dialogue as a technique to develop plot and move a story along. Regina Shrimpton created a couple of dialogue exercises and we worked through them to compress and improve. Some writers believe great dialogue should be a chain of poetic or comic gems, zingers of brilliantly crafted one-liners. Some believe it should be exactly like everyday speech. The key to writing effective dialogue is a compressed mixture of the two.