Join me for an energizing and inspiring writers seminar on November 5, 12-4:15 pm at the Civic Center in Elk Grove, California (near Sacramento). Three of us will be teaching the workshops sponsored by the Elk Grove Writers Guild. Sign up here.
Sessions:
Elaine Faber – “Do’s and Don’ts of Writing for Beginning Writers.”
Judith Starkston – “Writing Better Dialog.”
Great dialogue speeds a novel along. It builds subtle character development, furthers the action, adds tension to conflicts, layers in subtext, and draws the reader in close. How do you make all that happen and avoid the many pitfalls? And how do you fix your dialogue when it isn’t all you need it to be? In this workshop, we’ll learn to hear our characters as distinct individuals, surround the “talking heads” with physical and emotional grounding, place dialogue into deep point of view, and develop some handy but simple editing tools for improving dialogue once it’s on the page.
Gini Grossenbacher – “Descriptive, Dynamic Settings”
I hope to see my California writer friends at this writers seminar.
I gave a version of this dialogue talk via Zoom a while back, and I can do that for other groups if you aren’t in the Northern California area. Contact me if that sounds good.
For a post about Karen Odden’s advice on writing secondary characters.