WORKSHOPS:
Who’s Speaking? Point of View and Narrative Distance
Join novelist Michael Spurgeon on an exploration of narrative point of view and distance. Through a series of readings and exercises we will examine how point of view works, how various points of view can be blended, and how seemingly simple and straightforward choices about point of view are significantly complicated and enriched through various applications of narrative distance.
Led by: Michael Spurgeon
Turning the Physical World into Story
This will be a generative workshop focusing particularly on how the real and the fictional rub up against each other in the big metaphorical pot of soup that is your lived experience, and how writing the details of the physical world all the way down to the bone will activate your reader’s senses and encourage the emotional truths you have to tell to distill up out of that morass like fine Kentucky Bourbon. (And I promise not to mix so many metaphors in class). We will also talk nuts and bolts like: point of view, tense, dialogue, scene, beginnings and endings and why they weigh so much, and narrative arc. Students should come prepared to write.
Led by Pam Houston
Fast and Furious Tales
Award-winning writer Eric Witchey leads this fast, fun seminar in which he will use audience feedback to demonstrate just how quickly a story can be discovered and developed. He will combine the Emotion, Decision, Action, Conflict, Emotion cycle demonstrated in his previous session with the imagination of the participants to design a story on the spot. Attendees will leave this seminar with an understanding of how it was done and how quickly it can be done. The seminar will include handouts that will allow participants to go home and practice the techniques they experience in the seminar.
Led by: Eric Witchey
ED ACE and the Irreconcilable Self
Emotion-driven fiction sells. Award-winning writer Eric Witchey will lead this dynamic, hands-on seminar in which the underlying power of two emotional/psychological patterns that repeat in many successful stories will be explored and demonstrated. Attendees will participate in the creation of these key story elements and walk away with the ability to quickly find and make use of the core character emotions and psychological drivers that motivate every character decision in their stories.
Led by: Eric Witchey
A Missed Connection, The Worst Day Ever, and The Bad Good Man: Creating Characters Who Live
Using high school classics, popular novels-turned-TV-shows, and short stories by authors such as ZZ Packer, Annie Proulx, Junot Diaz, Ernest Hemingway, and Lorrie Moore as guides, we’ll explore and practice strategies to create complex, conflicted characters while adding opportunities for confrontation, increasing tension, and speeding pacing. Come with one of your own characters in mind, or use one we’ll develop in our opening writing exercise.
Led by: Erin McCabe
