Creating a Fictional World

A novelist must create characters, as well as a plot that moves the story forward, but all of this must exist within a fictional world. How do writers create such a world?  Most writing teachers tell their students to write what they know. My great teacher Albert Guerard, who taught at Harvard for twenty years and then at Stanford for twenty more years, told his students something quite different: Write what you can imagine. This was hugely freeing to his students and to me. A writer did not have to write about his or her own life, which might be small and uninteresting. In fact, the whole world is open to a novelist. Imagination is everything.

David Bianculli began writing for broadcast – specifically, for NPR’s Fresh Air with Terry Gross – more than 30 years ago. But before and concurrent to that, he also wrote for “print,” from newspapers and magazines to books and blogs. In this symposium, he’ll reveal what he learned about the differences between writing for different media… and will conduct an instant workshop where students can put those theories into practice, regarding both writing and (a key but often overlooked skill) reading.

Whodunit? Whydunit? Wheredunit? This workshop will explore the internal machinations of the mystery novel and how to pick up the reader’s pulse. Our focus will be on the fundamentals: outlining, plotting and character development—as well as how to create a suffocating sense of suspense that compels one to keep turning the page, chapter after chapter, until the very end. 

This Workshop is designed to engage participants with contemporary poets and the different strategies to generate new work.  While the focus is on African American poets, a range of poets will be under review.

The Workshop will be in two parts:

#1.  Participants will look at poems in the packet and discuss the work of those poets with whom they are unfamiliar.

#2.  We will use vocabulary from two or three of the poems to generate new work.

We will use two or three poems as catalyst for new works. Poems by Gwendolyn Brooks, Gregory Pardlo, Ada Limón, Lorenzo Thomas, Angela Jackson, Marilyn Chin, Maureen Owen, Cheryl Boyce-Taylor, Renato Rosaldo, Brenda Hillman, Latasha N. Diggs, Peter Covino, Joy Harjo, Major Jackson, and Charif Shanahan may be part of the packet.

 Participants must be prepared to read and write, write and write.

At the end of this workshop, it is my hope that participants will have created poems that they feel good about and have learned about.

WHAT:   Pitchapalooza is American Idol for writers (only kinder and gentler). Twenty authors will be selected at random to pitch their book. Each writer gets one minute—and only one minute! Dozens of writers have gone from talented amateurs to professionally published authors as a result of participating in Pitchapalooza, including Genn Albin, our KC winner who got a 3-book mid-6 figure deal with Farrar Straus & Giroux.  

HOW: At Pitchapalooza, judges will help you improve your pitch, not tell you how bad it is. Judges critique everything from idea to style to potential in the marketplace and much, much more. Authors come away with concrete advice as well as a greater understanding of the ins and outs of the publishing industry. Whether potential authors pitch themselves, or simply listen to trained professionals critique each presentation, Pitchapalooza is educational and entertaining for one and all. From Miami to Portland, from LA to NYC, and many stops along the way, Pitchapaloozas have consistently drawn standing-room-only crowds, press and blog coverage, and the kind of bookstore buzz reserved for celebrity authors.

PRIZE: At the end of Pitchapalooza, the judges will pick a winner. The winner receives an introduction to an agent or publisher appropriate for his/her book.

Given how much commerce and communication take place online, now, an online presence is vital to any author. This session will outline some of the common modes of online presence, and give participants an opportunity to consider what kind of presence they wish—or have the energy!—to maintain. After that, the presenter will demonstrate how to create two basic types of website (blog-oriented and static) using a free Wordpress account, and briefly show a few other tools that can be used, such as Twitter and Weebly. There will be a hands-on segment of the workshop, to allow participants to work on creating or editing their own sites, so please bring your laptops or tablets!

Really! It's not hard! Learn the basics of playwriting through a streamlined process that allows you to create a brand new play in only 90 minutes! We'll create characters, stories, settings, conflicts and give you some new tools to take home.

Genre fantasy is very different from science fiction, much less well understood, and possessed of its own set of pitfalls for the unwary writer. This workshop will help you to avoid those pitfalls. Going back to the basics of world-building, you will learn to shape your fantasy world into something that both convinces and makes sense, while still retaining the magic that drew you to it in the first place. Exotic and richly detailed though your fantasy world may be, it is still ruled by the basics of narrative. Luckily, those basics are simple and easily mastered, leaving you free to exercise your imagination to the limit.

As a multi-billion dollar industry and the largest segment of the paperback fiction market, there's no denying that romance sells. But why? Join New York Times and USA Today bestselling romance author Sarah MacLean for a workshop about the ins and outs of the most popular fiction genre -- how it's written, why it's read, and where it's going from here.

As poets we often delude ourselves into thinking that we must reach for the big theme. Yet the best poets often find their themes in the objects that surround them daily. This workshop will focus on finding the poetic essence of daily life. We will read a couple of poems by master poets and work on a couple of exercises.

There are two types of research: the nuts and bolts type that enriches your storytelling with detail and authenticity, and the exploratory type that helps you find your story in the first place. This workshop examines both kinds of research while explaining where to begin, who to interview, how to interview, how much to use, and the big question… when to stop. 

Novelist William Dean Howells proclaimed that the writer born Samuel Langhorne Clemens was “the Lincoln of our literature.” Ernest Hemingway certainly viewed Mark Twain as a liberating force, famously stating that “all American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn.” And comedian-activist Dick Gregory said that Twain was “was so far ahead of his time that he shouldn't even be talked about on the same day as other people.” Think of the benefits of knowing this literary master’s secrets? But in fact, Twain kept no secrets when it came to the writing process. He was extremely generous with his thoughts on style, literary habits, and the writer’s role in society. Indeed, Twain constantly was writing about writing. Mark Dawidziak, the author or editor of five Twain-centric books, including Mark My Words: Mark Twain On Writing, will talk about how Twain’s lively advice can help guide and inspire writers more than 108 years after his death.

“Writing,” as the saying goes, “is revision.” This workshop will discuss many approaches to editing and revision, and how to engage with the revision process in a way that is as inspired as the initial, generative stages of your writing. We’ll look at before-and-after examples of radically revised published works. In-class exercises will be geared towards employing new editorial and revisionary devices for both micro and macro aspects of a work-in-progress. We will also discuss the process of working with editors at literary magazines and publishing houses.  

“You draw your metaphors from whatever parts of the world you know,” Jane Hirshfield writes. In this way, metaphors are a product of proximity; we make use of what’s within our reach. But distance plays into metaphor in other ways, too. When comparing one thing with another, how far can the imagination stretch? How does the writer calibrate that distance correctly? Together, we’ll look at a range of examples from different writers to better understand how metaphors map onto the page. This will equip us to develop more effective and imaginative metaphors in our own work, the kind that grab editors’ attention.

Attend an evening reading and signing event featuring Alice Hoffman, Chris Bohjalian, Michael Swanwick, and Pablo Medina.

The Artist as Activist

Artists today are grappling with their place in the current social and political landscape: when is art activism and when is it escapism?  The fact is, as artists, we can take the risks that politicians won’t. Moreover, art can often reach people in ways that politics can't.  As E. M. Forster once said, “Fiction is truer than history because it goes beyond the evidence.”  That’s true of a lot of art, because a lot of art is about something that a lot of politics is not: empathy.  In this keynote, Bohjalian will discuss how he has used fiction to address issues as diverse as genocide, domestic violence, and teen homelessness.

When writing science fiction, it’s all too easy to get lost in the minutia of world-building at the expense of your story’s coherence. This workshop will teach you how to move from your nifty idea to a finished work. Starting with the most efficient modes of research, you will learn how to build a world around your idea and then populate it with characters that will embody the idea clearly and effectively. Along the way, you will also learn how much of your research to include in the finished story – and, more importantly, how much to leave out.

The onset of social media has made communicating with audiences and customers very easy but for writers it is not so simple.  Writing is a solitary discipline and yet, with the same marketing and publicity tools available to everyone, it is more important than ever for authors to distinguish themselves and their work from their colleagues.  The first step in doing this is to establish their own individual brands.  In this program Claire McKinney a veteran of the publishing industry will explain what a brand is in the book world; examples of successes and failures; and how writers can determine what kind of brand they need to be and how to build one. 

Have an opportunity to meet for 10 minutes with agents, editors, and publishers. Sign up information will be available soon.

Enjoy an engaging presentation from a panel of publishers on options for publishing your work over lunch. Panel participants will be announced soon.

Chris Bohjalian says that his fiction has changed enormously in the digital age -- and it has changed for a variety of reasons.  But the big one?  The spectacular renaissance in TV and Film.  The Sopranos.  Breaking Bad.  Fargo.  Sociologists and anthropologists have chronicled the way our attention spans have changed, but so have our expectations of narrative: Bohjalian believes that even literary fiction must begin with a bang (at least a metaphoric one).  And so in this workshop, he will explore with the writers how to begin a novel or a short story -- and how to hook your readers from the first page.

In this workshop, we'll delve into the personal essay form, examining what makes a strong and marketable piece. Drawing on one's own personal experience for writing material offers up unique opportunities as well as a number of pitfalls. Here, we'll look at writers who have used the "I" in a variety of ways to deepen their work and connect with readers. We'll also uncover some of the common pitfalls of the genre, and touch on the basics of the personal essay market as well as what to know before you publish.

Attendees will be expected to read two essays (to be emailed beforehand) in preparation for the class. Attendees should also come prepared with a short (2-3 pages) personal essay (or start to an essay) that we will discuss during the session.

Coming Soon.

The fundamentals of performing each of these genres are related but distinct. In my opening lecture I will present and illustrate these fundamentals. Next, participants will perform the work they created earlier. Each participant will first get feedback on their writing and performing from me. This will be followed by a group discussion, and questions. The workshop will conclude with my closing remarks. 

Intelligent and searching, original and impassioned, lit from within and motivated by a desire to start a conversation about what it means to be alive, to choose, to yearn, to be different, to take a stand, to get along, and to hope, the best books written for middle grade and young adult readers are, most assuredly “big” books, the kind that live with readers long after the last pages have been read and the books slipped back onto the shelf. In this intensive (and fun) workshop, we’ll learn from some of the greatest MG/YA writers about the creation of voice, tone, and setting—and the secrets of narrative risk. We’ll read, share, write, and talk, and emerge with an enriched understanding of the possible. Open to all.