Regardless of genre, the rocket fuel for all books—fiction and non-fiction alike—is suspense. You have to keep readers desperate to know what happens next. But how do you accomplish that? How do you keep them turning those pages? Relying on tips and insights he’s learned across the nearly twenty books he’s published as a novelist […]
In this interactive seminar, we will examine real-world excerpts, including some from well-known published authors, in exercises focused on streamlining the writing. Participants will bring examples of their own work for similar exercises. Topics include: Active vs passive voice; Showing vs Telling; adverb and adjective abuses; abuse of filler words, overwriting/redundancy; and more.
Do you suffer from research paralysis? Are you intimidated by huge research projects in unfamiliar time periods, or one where there is an impossible amount of material to choose from? In this session, the author of widely acclaimed Donner Party retelling The Hunger (and recently published WWII novel The Fervor) explains how she applies research […]
How much do you have to say? Plenty? A great deal? Copious amounts? Loads? Heaps? Oodles? A boatload? Having much to say is a good start, but having facility with saying it is another matter. In this workshop, we will investigate the lost art of superfluity, not only with plot material but also with words […]
Have you ever sat down to write a story and realized you have no idea how or where to start? In this workshop, we'll go over some of the ways writers get their creative engines revved up and moving, using basic outlines as the bones of our stories, exercises in basic character formation and development […]
This class will give those new to creative writing or considering beginning creative writing, a brief overview of getting started and establishing a solid foundation whether focused on writing short stories, novels, memoirs, or other creative nonfiction. It ranges from thinking like a writer to basic writing techniques of plot, characterization, scene, setting, dialogue, point […]
In this ZOOM workshop, participants will learn how to create and maintain a vivid and continuous fictional dream. We'll also discuss how to avoid bumping the reader out of the dream via authorial or narrative intrusion, clumsy writing, deviation in real-time linearity, telling rather than showing, improper internal monologue presentation, and many other things. We […]