The Woolf Quarterly held WriteCon Zürich Autumn 16 last weekend.
A wonderful, stimulating day of ideas and discussion where 30 writers came together to learn and share.
Origami bookshelves by Sarah Buchmann
Lindsey Grant guided her group through the complexities of writing Memoir and Non-Fiction. This is a subject which requires an experienced tutor with an awareness of how traumatic some personal experiences can be.
Thankfully, as an ex Program Director of NaNoWriMo and memoirist herself, she steered a professional course between sharing individual stories and keeping the group focused.
Memoir & Non-Fiction workshop
In the Fiction Masterclass, Jason Donald packed structure, story, plot and prose into one intensive day.
Tragedy begins with harmony and ends with chaos. Comedy is the reverse.
His insights into Plot v. Story, the difference between the Hero/Heroine’s Journey and the significance of subplots intrigued me.
Main plot carries story, sub plot carries theme
In the afternoon session, we turned our attention to our own writing. Jason asked us to edit 3-5 pages of our work in progress.
Fiction Masterclass
First we weeded out all the bad habits (every author has a crutch in terms of words, phrases or sentence structure). Next we whipped out all those unnecessary filters.
Felt, wondered, decided, seemed are all filter words which distance the reader.
Finally, participants worked in pairs to create fresh, surprising prose.
This exercise was such a success, I’m sharing it here.
Write down ten words which express emotional states in your story. Eg, frustration, loneliness, jealousy, passion, triumph…
Write down ten words which appear in the environment of your storyworld. Eg, ice, sea-salt, wind, fur, shells…
Take one from each list and combine them into a sentence, using an image featuring the latter to evoke the former. Don’t mention the emotion, just hint at it. Write five sentences, sometimes a question or a negative. Amongst them, you’ll find one you can use or develop.
Hermit crabs scuttled their shells sideways at his approach, as if even they shunned him.
Her smile, sea-salt in his wounds, expressed nothing more than pity.
Swap lists with a partner. Give them your lists and see what five combinations they create.
Finally, writing workshops always result in such fabulous goodies!
Origami books, a syringe pen and a dead body pen holder. My kind of weekend.
jjmarsh 