At the heart of every memorable narrative are characters that snap, crackle and pop on the page. Good characters, bad characters, heroes and villains, all must spring into three-dimensional life. In this workshop designed for prose writers at all levels, you will be asked to bring a 500-800 word finished piece from home, which we’ll consider in class on Saturday. We’ll spend the rest of the weekend honing techniques to transform nouns, verbs, and even a few adjectives into living, breathing, complicated characters. Remember, even a murderer, saint, or soccer mom likely had a parent or sibling who loved her. It’s your job as a writer to make readers care about all your characters, even those who have done very bad things. Falling in love with the wrong person. Losing their way. Pulling real or metaphorical triggers.   

At the end of our weekend together, you’ll have a much better idea of how to do that, and a new piece of writing, generated from in-class exercises. You should plan on a good deal of writing this weekend.  Finally, we will consider the famous Henry James quote: “What is character but the determination of incident? What is incident but the illustration of character?”

In this workshop, we will generate new writing through guided exercises and prompts; offer feedback/first impressions on writing you produce in our week; workshop writing you bring from home.