Dialog: Hearing Voices

Dialog is one of the knottiest craft issues for writers. We’ll look at strategies to make your dialog work on every level – advancing the plot, illuminating character, shaping the reader’s understanding of time and place, adding humor and drama. Participants may bring selections from their work-in-progress for critiquing and revision. We’ll write through an exercise, and I’ll provide a packet of additional handouts and exercises for continued writing.

This workshop has been featured at the North Carolina Writers Network and the Gathering of Writers.

To schedule this event, contact the author by e-mail at valnieman@gmail.com.

Character Development: Under Pressure

You work hard to create characters that you love – that share some greater or lesser part of you – but if your story or novel is to work, you must put them into terrible situations. This is how we discover what characters are indeed “made of” and how their strengths and weaknesses determine the path they will follow in our stories. We’ll discuss how characters are refined by pressure situations, and how you can accelerate your plot. We’ll use scenarios to help you put your characters between than rock of necessity and the hard place of their psyches. The session will include handouts for further work.

Versions of this workshop range from a two-hour session (Old Books on Front Street) to a half day (WritersHouse in Charlottesville, VA.) to a weekend program (John C. Campbell Folk School).

To schedule this event, contact the author by e-mail at valnieman@gmail.com.

Setting: A Sense of Place

“Feelings are bound up in place,” Eudora Welty

The best writing comes out of direct experience of a place, a people, a time. Things you know in your body, a somatic memory that allows your character to move in a developed, authentic setting. Grounding, some call this, and it’s a good analogy – like Anteus we take strength from touching our mother earth. This workshop examines how to create a place - macrosetting and microsetting - where your story can breathe!

This workshop was featured recently at the Blue Ridge Bookfest.

To schedule this event, contact the author by e-mail at valnieman@gmail.com.