The idea of a Master Class:
Our goal this year is to master the craft of writing. Our mission is to grow writers, so we have asked each of our presenters to offer one Master Craft Class on one of six literary elements: Characterization, Dialogue, POV, Worldbuilding, Scene Building, and Revision. Each track offers you the opportunity to focus on one of the six Master Craft Classes, or another wonderful workshop of your choosing. All Master Craft Classes and Workshops are in keeping with our theme. No matter what your genre or level of writing, all workshops are designed to elevate the quality of your writing!
Follow these simple instructions:
1. Read through all the class descriptions
2. Choose one class from each track
3. Write down the number of your selections
4. Register and pay for the event, then follow the prompts for selecting your classes
The 2018 class choices:
1st Track: 10:15 a.m. – 11:30 a.m.
1A Master Craft Class:
Revision – Remix and Making Writing New, with Dr. DaMaris B. Hill
Genre is a category of artistic composition, as in music or literature, characterized by similarities in form, style, or subject matter. Genre is the way we have come to know the literary canon and identify styles of literary composition. In this workshop, we will take a close look at genre and genre constraints. Then we will discuss how to manipulate genre constraints in order to create hybrid and new forms from old work.
1C Master Craft Class:
I Hear Voices: Style as Character in First Person Narration, with Michael Lowenthal
“Call me Ishmael.”
“Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins.”
The most memorable first person narrators have voices as distinctive as fingerprints; reading them, we are struck by how they tell their stories as much as by what they tell. In great literature, the intertwining of voice and character appears seamless, but this effect is achieved only through considered choices on the writer’s part: Does the narrator talk in polysyllabic, romantic, mellifluous words, or in short, curt, hard, Saxon terms? Making use of clauses and punctuation (and perhaps interrogative phrases and parenthetical asides), does the narrator hedge what he is saying? No, she makes declarative statements.
In this class, we will read the opening passages of several stories and novels in extreme close-up. Examining syntax, word choice, punctuation — all the elements that subtly (and not so subtly) affect how we “hear” a voice on the page — we will discover just how much crucial information can be revealed about a character right off the bat, before much (if any) “factual” information about that character has been provided. We will examine the ways in which, as writers, we can manipulate the voices of our narrators so that the way they sound reinforces who they are.
1D Master Craft Class:
Building a Fantastical or Science-Fictional World, with Jeanne Cavelos
Building a world can be an exhilarating experience. But it is also fraught with peril. How do you ensure that your world is consistent, believable, rich, and unified? How do you avoid needless complication and maximize dramatic potential? In this workshop, we’ll discuss how to build a unique world step by step, starting with a magic system or science-inspired idea, and how to avoid some of the pitfalls common to world building.
1E Master Craft Class:
World Building, with Elizabeth Rush
What kinds of details plunge a reader into a story? In this Master Class we will learn how to separate everyday details from more intimate, more revealing ones. Through in-class writing exercises you will learn how to write with greater clarity and suggestiveness.
1F Master Craft Class:
The Art of Dialogue, with Sinan Unel
Striking a balance between withholding and revealing information is one of the most challenging tasks for the dramatist. Thankfully, the gossiping servant as an expository device is a thing of the past. Nowadays we must use specialized, almost surgical skills to hold the attention of a sophisticated, all-too-ready-to-be-bored audience. A natural “ear” for dialogue is a wonderful gift; but writing dramatic dialogue does not come naturally to anyone. In the words of David Mamet: “[Writing dialogue] is a new skill. You can train yourselves to do it, but you need to start now.”
In this seminar, we will explore various techniques for writing active, compelling dialogue. We’ll consider the following principles:
- Writing active exposition
- Avoiding “expository” writing
- Presentational vs. Representational exposition
- Subtext
- High and low context exposition
- The power of silence
1G Master Craft Class:
From Bird’s Eye to Worm’s Eye: How Point of View Creates Context and Meaning, with Pamela Petro
In this class we’ll look at short excerpts written in first, second, and third person, and discuss how point of view is a tool authors wield to create meaning, shape character, and establish a relationship with readers. We’ll also examine the benefits and drawbacks of blinkering and enlarging narrators’ viewpoints. Students will practice swapping points of view during an in-class assignment.
1H Breathing life into the Golems, with James A. Moore
Every story and novel is filled with characters. In this Master Class, we examine the methods of creating and maintaining life like characters in fiction, be it for small “walk on” parts or for major players in your tales.
1I Feminist Poetry by Women and Men, with Janet Sylvester
The “Me, Too” movement continues to highlight the disparity between what many of us have thought of as improvements in women’s lives and the continued abuses of power still fundamental in our culture. In this workshop, we’ll look at new feminist poems written by both women and men. We’ll talk about how to write poetry that’s from-the-heart feminist, including how to avoid writing propaganda. Bring a feminist poem that you’ve written to the workshop. We’ll also begin to write a feminist poem in the workshop.
1J Writing Our Parents, with Hester Kaplan
Writing about a parent is perhaps where our most illuminating work exists as we attempt to make sense of a life both connected to and separate from our own. In working with both biographical detail and the demands of narrative, the writing you do about a parent is where you most profoundly discover the breadth and design of your own art. An in-class exercise and discussion will explore the charged field at the intersection of historical and emotional truth.
1K Cutting A Vein, with Sanderia Faye –
“It is only when you open your veins and bleed onto the page a little that you establish contact with your reader.” – Paul Gallico
“There’s nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein.” – Ernest Hemingway
Have you ever wondered why there are published authors and why other writers still have that one hundred and twenty page manuscript locked in a desk drawer somewhere? If writing were easy, we would all be Pulitzer Prize winners. In this class, Sanderia will share with you tips to overcome the hurdles of writing a novel that will get you to dust off that manuscript and get it published.
1L The Objective Correlative in Fiction and Essay, with Ann Hood – CLASS FILLED
The goal of our storytelling is to make the reader feel what the characters feel. This seminar will explore how to use objects to illuminate your characters’ emotions in both fiction and nonfiction.
Signing in Dining Hall: 11:30 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.
Lunch in the Dining Hall: 12:00 – 1:00p.m.
Panel: “Writing from the Heart” 1:00-2:00 p.m.
Top authors share their experiences and provide insight and tips on to how to write from the heart and connect to your reader while staying true to yourself.
2nd Track: 2:15 p.m.-3:30 p.m.
2A Master Craft Class:
Getting Your Beginning Right, with Ann Hood – CLASS FILLED
The beginning is the often most revised part of your novel, memoir, or short story. We will discuss what makes a good beginning, how to find your true beginning, and then hear your first two pages with an eye toward revising them.
2B Master Craft Class:
Nonfiction Scenes, with Deborah Joy Corey
This workshop will explore how to build strong nonfiction scenes using history, vignettes, slices of reality, journalism, quotes, and the writer’s unique opinions. The success of a nonfiction piece lies in having something different to say and shoring that up with key components. Through exercises and sharing, Deborah Joy Corey will lead participants in honing a clear vision and opinion. Both new and experienced writers welcome.
2C Master Craft Class:
So You Think You Know Me? with Ana E Ross
Ana E. Ross focuses on three vital elements of characterization in storytelling – Goal, Motivation, and Conflict (GMC). She references the characters in her books to explain the importance of authors building such deep, personal relationships with their characters that they seem to jump off the page, right into the readers’ worlds. This interactive workshop invites you to bring a character you’re working on. We will interview your character and find out everything you need to know about your character to bring them to life.
2D Master Craft Class:
Magical Thinking, Scientific Methods, and Secondary Worlds, with Will Alexander
Explore world building techniques in science fiction, fantasy, and other unrealisms written for young audiences.
2E Master Craft Class:
Dialogue, with Janet Sylvester
Writing from the Heart, the theme of this conference, implies speaking from the heart, though we know that much that we say to one another “in real life” falls short of what is important and true. In this workshop we’ll look at examples of good dialogue in fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry in the form of conversations between characters and between a character and their own inner voice. In the process, we’ll discuss the importance of voice, creative mimicry, the interrogative, and the essential contribution of dialogue to the movement of story, point of focus, and a poem’s turn. There will be in-class writing.
2F Master Craft Class:
Who Will Tell Your Story? Point of View Basics and Beyond, with Hester Kaplan
Point of view is fundamentally about the story you want to tell, and how and who you want to tell it. In this class, we’ll consider various points of view, and how each functions and forecasts a story’s shape, style, and relationship to the reader. An in-class writing exercise and discussion will explore how we find the most compelling point of view and perspective for our work.
2G The Dynamic Character Question, with Sinan Unel
At the center of all good stories lies a single question around which all other elements revolve. Anchored firmly in character make-up, the Dynamic Character Question is powerful and essential, yet also so subtle that you might not realize it’s there. In this class we’ll study how the DCQ not only drives the action, but also generates motivation, suspense, turning points, as well as the story’s thematic and philosophical aspects.
2H Descriptive Language, with Benjamin Nugent
This focuses on the art of description, investigating different modes of imagery and the uses of concrete and figurative language to evoke character, setting, mood and theme. The workshop will explore the power of the “telling detail” and the difference between description for description’s sake and description as an expression of the work’s emotional core.
2I Home, Away, and In-Between, with Pamela Petro
Imagination and the Sense of Place. In this class we’ll consider the relative meanings of “home” and “travel”. For example, how you sometimes feel more “at home” when you’re away, and how favorite places (home included) can take on very different profiles in the imagination than they have in “reality.” We’ll look at how several travel writers take up the challenge of writing about their favorite destinations. Students should come prepared to write about home or a place they love to visit.
2J Unifying Your Story around a Meaningful Theme, with Jeanne Cavelos
As author Leslie What says, “A story that tells a truth in ways that the reader cannot forget is one worth reading.” Do your stories “tell a truth”? Is it a truth you believe in? Few writers realize that unity is key to creating a powerful and emotionally resonant story, and theme is key to creating a unified story. In this workshop, we’ll identify themes important to you and explore how to build a story from a theme so it is conveyed in an organic, not preachy, way. A way “that the reader cannot forget.” When the core of your story reflects your heart and mind, your unique way of seeing and understanding the world, it gives readers that experience we all seek: to see life through a new and unforgettable lens.
2K Enhancing your Voice, with Jane Brox
A writer’s voice is forged from conviction and from dedication to her subject. But a writer can also deepen that voice — be it authoritative, intimate, humorous, or lyrical– through deliberate decisions concerning word choice, tone, syntax, point of view. This workshop will focus on techniques to help writers emphasize their voice and stretch it. We’ll look at some short excerpts from Rachel Carson’s work, and participants will explore, through brief exercises, some strategies for enhancing their voice.
2L The Magic and Realism: Counting the Butterflies, with Indira Ganesan
Garcia Marquez once noted in a Paris Review interview that, “A novelist can do anything he wants so long as he makes people believe in it.” In this way, butterflies can appear out of thin air defying a natural explanation, but to make the reader believe it, Garcia Marquez said it was important to note down the precise number. It is a given that Franz Kafka’s hero turned into an insect; we are told so in the first line. Now, we read the story to learn the consequences. In this class, we will look at how to root our narrative choices, however imaginary, with realism, with a “brick face,” again quoting Garcia Marquez. In this class, we will use writing exercises and read short examples of fiction to give our pencils wings, both metaphorical and literal.
3rd Track: 3:45-5:00 p.m.
3A Master Craft Class:
Revision, with Jane Brox – CLASS FILLED
Revision is no slight thing – it is a re-seeing, and a re-imaging of your creative work, which requires different strategies at different stages in the writing process. It’s helpful to think of revision as ongoing engagement with your work that includes both expansion and refinement. In this class we will discuss the scope of revision and strategies for undertaking it. Please bring along a few pages of your own work to revise.
3B Master Craft Class:
Scene Building, with Benjamin Nugent
Typically, writers attempt to balance their use of scene and summary, making decisions about when to employ one or the other. This workshop investigates the various uses and misuses of scene and summary. Special attention is paid to the components of scene and how scenes evolve.
3C Master Craft Class:
The Devil in the Details, with James A. Moore
A discussion on when and how to use words to set the mood of a scene. When is the detail too much and when you should add more.
3D Master Craft Class:
Dialogue, with Sanderia Faye –
“Sometimes, you learn a hell of a lot more about a character listening to what a character doesn’t say.” ~ Max Adams
If you have ever thought, Why doesn’t she just shut up?, about someone who talks continuously without pause, this is the class for you. When writers give their characters the opportunity to speak, they may jabber on for pages and your reader is thinking please stop. In this class, you’ll discover how to write dialogue that reveals character and advances your story’s plot. We will also examine examples, formats, and tips for writing dialogue that will keep your reader engaged in the story.
3E Master Craft Class:
Point of View: How to tell the Story, with Indira Ganesan
Finding the right viewpoint to telling a story can be a key to unleashing a story’s potential for success. In this class, we will look at first person, second person, and third person points of view. Using the first person can be like donning a mask, acting a role, and living a life on the page that is quite different than one’s own. The third person can remove the mask, become omniscient, gently ironic, or acting as a camera. Using a variety of writing exercises, we will experiment with different points of view for a new story, or one that you are working on.
3G Poetry Workshop – Make It New: Jazz Vocalists as Inspiration, with Dr. DaMaris B. Hill
Sarah Vaughn said, “There are notes between the notes.” In this workshop we will look to jazz vocalists as inspiration. We will listen to various jazz vocalists and discuss their varied distinctions – think of sound, silence and rhythm. Then we will turn to our poems and consider how some of the techniques of jazz vocalists can aid us in revising old poems and/or creating new poems. New and old poems are welcome. Genre bending is encouraged.
3H What Kind of Smoke? with Will Alexander
This workshop will steal character creation techniques from theater and combine them with a parlor game beloved of the Surrealists. The results will be illuminating and ridiculously fun.
3I Memoir Workshop, with Deborah Joy Corey
Every life holds many stories. This workshop will serve as a starting point for each participant to begin and shape a particular life story, or to begin a longer piece with the goal of a completed memoir. Through readings, prompts, and discussions, Deborah Joy Corey will guide participants in finding their true voice for telling their story. On completion of the workshop, each writer will have a solid beginning, so that they may continue on their own. Both new and experienced writers welcome.
3J Following the Bread Crumbs: Linear Reading and Writing, with Michael Lowenthal – CLASS FILLED
Any successful story must be greater than the sum of its parts, but the reader can only experience it one part at a time, in the order in which the words (and punctuation marks) appear on the page. As readers, we follow a story from left to right, up to down, led on inevitably by the trail of bread crumbs a writer has offered us. In this class, by examining one story—word by word and comma by comma—we will hone our understanding of how a writer manipulates the reader’s necessarily linear experience of a narrative. And once we understand how and why a writer leaves us a particular trail of crumbs, we can improve our own ability to create trails for other readers to follow.
3K Ekphrasis, with Elizabeth Rush – Have you ever wondered how to write about a painting you adore or a song you love? Then this Master Class is for you. Ekphrasis––a rhetorical device originally employed by Greek philosophers––is the representation in language of a work of art. In this course you will learn how to make art objects come alive in the reader’s mind.
3L Picture This: Story Boards and Series Bibles, with Ana E Ross – Mastering the art of writing and being true to your characters and plots by utilizing story boards and creating a series bible. They say, “A picture is worth a thousand words”. In this workshop you will learn how to use pictures to help tell your story. Please bring in images that represent your characters, their clothing, their journey, their setting, and story line so you can develop memorable and multidimensional characters.
Reception: 5:00-5:45 p.m.
Stay for the after party! The 603 Reception is a chance to relax, make new friends, network, and take home a great raffle prize. Hot and cold appetizers will be served for your schmoozing enjoyment.
