Assign each student a character. The characters will be real people, animals or inanimate objects, depending on the desires of the teacher and the number of students in the classroom. More students means more characters are necessary.
Instruct each student to give their character personality. That is, each student will write down adjectives to describe their character, such as "happy," "depressed," "interested in science" or "dull."
Pair the students with another student, and instruct each group to write a dialogue exchange between their characters based on their character descriptions. This part can become interesting when a student who has created an upbeat character is paired with a student who has created the opposite type of character.
Read a few select dialogues out loud. After reading each dialogue, discuss with the class what they can assume about each character's personality.
Discuss with students the importance of the dialogue. Was the dialogue useful in giving clues to the characters? Would the dialogue be useful in a work of fiction? How? The answers to these questions are, yes, the dialogue is useful and, yes, the dialogue would give clues to the rest of the story or perhaps provide other literary devices, such as foreshadowing, to the story.