For the first time, Nicola Griffith will teach an online writing workshop. It's sponsored by STAR, the Southern Tier Authors of Romance. You can register for this month-long class now.
February 2007 Online Writing Workshop
"Vivid fiction: how to breathe life into people and places," by Nicola Griffith.
Maximum: app. 20 students (if needed, we will offer an encore workshop)
Readers want to live in the world of the story. They love to feel what the characters feel, to do what they do, to move through their world and to know that world viscerally: to taste it, hear it, feel it on their skin. When readers close a good book, the story lives on for them, as vividly as a personal memory. It's through living your story that readers fall in love with your book and make it their own.
This online workshop will use discussion, lectures, exercises, and critique sessions--of published works and your own work-in-progress--to show you:
- how to move a living body through a time and place so that the reader feels what the character feels
- how to use a range of senses--smell, sound, touch--to describe surroundings
- how the order in which things happen (narrative grammar) makes all the difference in putting a reader inside the character's skin
- how and why word choice matters
- how to do all this without slowing the story down
- how to draw lessons from your own favourite novels
Description is the foundation on which your fiction will live or die. It is essential for a vivid reading experience.
Nicola Griffith is the author of four novels: Ammonite (Ballantine, Del Rey 1993), Slow River (Ballantine, Del Rey 1995), The Blue Place (Avon, Perennial, 1998), Stay (Nan A. Talese, Vintage, 2002), and editor of the Bending the Landscape anthology series (Overlook). She's written numerous essays on writing. Her work has won 12 national and international awards (including the Nebula Award, the World Fantasy Award, the James Tiptree Award, five Lambda Literary Awards) and been translated into nine languages. In the UK (she's English), she taught women's self-defense for five years--so she knows how to get physical. (Her forthcoming novel, Always (Riverhead, 2007), is essentially two books in one: a novel and a how-to manual.) She's taught writing for a variety of organisations ranging from the Arts Council of Great Britain to Clarion West. This will be her first online teaching experience; she expects it to be a blast.
Registration details:
Each workshop costs $15 for members of the Romance Writers of America, $20 for others.
All writers are welcome. If you know how to send e-mail, then you've mastered all of the technical skills you need to participate in our workshops. (The workshop coordinator will help with any computer issues.) You will be automatically enrolled in the workshop's listserve just before the class begins. All of the messages posted by the instructor and other students will be delivered directly to your inbox, although you may also view them from the Yahoo website. The instructor will post lessons twice a week for four weeks. Most of the lessons will include a writing exercise or question to prompt group discussion. Students are encouraged to share their writing and thoughts with the group but this is optional.
To register by check or money order:
Please complete the form below and send it with a check or money order (in U.S. dollars) payable to STAR Writers Workshop to:
Jill Shultz, STAR Workshop Coordinator
4 Monroe Street
Binghamton, NY 13904
USA
To register via Paypal:
Send the payment to starpay@gmail.com. And send your information to Jill at js264@cornell.edu, including the workshop(s) of your choice, your name, e-mail address, and RWA number, if applicable.
Registration form:
Please send this form plus your payment to the address above.
Your name
Your e-mail address:
Workshop:
RWA Member? Yes/No RWA number:
Total amount enclosed:
To learn about the 4 other STAR writing workshops, please visit our website after January 1st: members.aol.com/STARRWA/workshop.pdf.
Small update tonight, so enjoy 'em!
Elisa
- Original
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