This coming Saturday—July 27—from 11 a.m.-4 p.m.—I’ll be leading the workshop “Bring Life to Your Characters and Shape to Your Plot” for the Northern Virginia Writers Club. The workshop distills a number of lessons that I’ve used at times for my semester-long fiction and creative nonfiction workshops at George Mason University: the benefits and drawbacks of character inventories; direct and indirection presentation of character; the direct relationships between character and plot; stories as conflict versus stories as connection/disconnection; linear versus modular storytelling…. While it’s likely going to be a lot to cover perhaps, my plan is to introduce concepts and idea for folks to both work on during the sessions themselves and then to develop later on their own. We’ll see how it goes!
Please note that the workshop is free for members of the Northern Virginia Writers Club, the regional chapter of the Virginia Writers Club, but registration has already closed. — Art Taylor