Short Story: Edgemont Drive by E.L.Doctorow

Have you read a short story written entirely in dialog? The latest issue of New Yorker has one such story by E.L.Doctorow. No quotation marks, no ‘he-said/she-said’s, no explanations or descriptions – just lines and lines of dialog. Stylistically very chic, don’t you think?

So he’s there. What—hitting on your wife?
No, that won’t happen. It’s not what he’s about. I’m pretty sure.
So what’s the problem?
He comes on like some prissy fuss-pot poet, doesn’t have it together, drives a junk heap, claims to have quit his teaching job but was probably fired. And, with all of that, you know he’s a player.
Yeah, I know people like that.
His difficulties work in his favor. He gets what he wants.

It’s about a man and his wife and their home and a weird old guy who just shows up in their driveway and sits in his car staring at their house. Feels like your kind of story? Check it out here.

Its not a story I would shout from the roof tops about, but it has inspired a writing prompt I am excited to try out: Write a short story entirely in dialog.

Anyone else wants to give it a try?