Any ideas on writing workshops?

[Boota]

I'm speaking to a college class about my book and writing next Thursday, and I'm fine with that. It's going to be real loose and easy. (Kind of like the girls I used to date.) However, the only other times I have ever been on a college campus was to drink or beat up a guy who was stalking a friend of mine, so I'm already a little out of place. The thing is, after this one class thing I have been (tentatively) invited to run a workshop on writing and I have never even attended a workshop on writing. The extent of my "workshop" using the technique I used on my first book will likely be: "Think up some funny shit. Now, write it down." Somehow I feel like I'm going to need a bit more than that.

Has anyone here ever ran or attended a workshop on writing? Are there any do's and don't's? What kind of things have you seen? I feel like a hack who is about to be exposed for being a hack. Fortunately, I never really aimed higher than "hack", but I would still like to bring something to the table for anyone who would attend this workshop.

 

[cloudy]

I'm speaking to a college class about my book and writing next Thursday, and I'm fine with that. It's going to be real loose and easy. (Kind of like the girls I used to date.) However, the only other times I have ever been on a college campus was to drink or beat up a guy who was stalking a friend of mine, so I'm already a little out of place. The thing is, after this one class thing I have been (tentatively) invited to run a workshop on writing and I have never even attended a workshop on writing. The extent of my "workshop" using the technique I used on my first book will likely be: "Think up some funny shit. Now, write it down." Somehow I feel like I'm going to need a bit more than that.

Has anyone here ever ran or attended a workshop on writing? Are there any do's and don't's? What kind of things have you seen? I feel like a hack who is about to be exposed for being a hack. Fortunately, I never really aimed higher than "hack", but I would still like to bring something to the table for anyone who would attend this workshop.

Why don't you scan through some of the writing challenges that have been done on the board? I know Abs has issued a couple of good ones, and Vella did one on sunsets and sunrises that was nice. The whole point in those was to use all your senses, and, especially in vella's, use setting.

Just a thought.

 

[impressive]

Why don't you scan through some of the writing challenges that have been done on the board? I know Abs has issued a couple of good ones, and Vella did one on sunsets and sunrises that was nice. The whole point in those was to use all your senses, and, especially in vella's, use setting.

Just a thought.

I need to find that sunset one. I wanna save my post.

EDITED TO ADD: On topic ...

People ask me to speak or give presentations all the time now (not on writing) simply because I've become recognizable in my field. I hate it & always feel unprepared. However, it's your passion for the subject that carries the class.

You'll be FINE. (And I like cloudy's recommendation re the writing challenges ... plus the VOICE challenges!)

 

[TheEarl]

Boota: I'm in exactly the same position having volunteered to start a Creative Writing society at my uni. I don't have a scoob what I'm doing.

However, I'm going to purloin loads of the Voice challenges and use advice from a friend of mine who's on a Creative Writing class. She gave me this advice on a workshop:

"Right, get everybody (including yourself) to write a short piece about a strong childhood memory. Then get everyone to pass them one to the left and read. Then put yours up for discussion (so that you're breaking the ice) and ask the person who read yours whether they connected with the feelings and whether they got why it was a strong memory to you. Talk about how memories are all subjective and something strong to you may not even have been remembered by the other protagonists. The art of writing is in telling something that's completely unimportant in the general scheme of things and making the reader understand why it's important to your characters. Then ask if anyone else wants to discuss theirs in the same way."

Either tha or you could read through the Writer's Resources here on Lit. Loads of good writerly stuff there.

The Earl

 

[Boota]

Thanks for the quick responses. I'm trying to put this thing together right now. Copping some ideas from the challenges on this board is a great idea. I'll scan through and see what I want to "liberate". LOL. (With credit given, of course.) I have a lot of confidence in my ability to talk to people and be entertaining, so that doesn't bother me. I definitely have a passion for writing and I can fall back on that. I just really want to make sure that the things I offer are useful. A list of these writing challenges sounds like it will be most useful.

I suppose I do have a couple of techniques to offer. I was taught a really good timeline/plot point map by Christopher Moore and I learned a character building exercise from Shirley Jump, the romance writer. I just didn't use these techniques on my book that is out and that's primarily the one I will be speaking about.

Thanks again.

 

[oggbashan]

Exercises

Two exercises from my creative writing class:

1. Postcard

Have a selection of pictures or postcards. Ask students to select one and then write about it. Why did they pick that one? What does it mean to them? What preconceptions do they have about the picture? What could they use to build a story?

2. Orange

Go out an buy an orange. Study it, peel it, eat it.

Write about anything related to that orange.

My answers:

1. I chose a postcard showing a damaged block of flats surrounded by rubble:
***
"We are here, Minister. This is the site for our urban regeneration project. As you can see it is all brown field land.”

“I can see an old tower block. What else was here?"

“Several more of the same. That one will come down next week.”

“It doesn’t look too tall as tower blocks go. I’ve seen taller.”

“Yes, Minister, but we still couldn’t get reasonable tenants for any of them.
We tried everything. We had action teams, special hit squads for litter and graffiti, extra police patrols, CCTV, hotlines to report anti-social behaviour, you name it, we had it. We poured money into the area but it got us nowhere.”

“What did the tenants say?”

“Most of them were young, Minister. Families with children. They complained that there was nowhere safe for the children to play, the schools and shops were over a mile away, there was no community spirit, that sort of thing.”

“But were their complaints justified?”

“We don’t think so, Minister.”

“You showed me the plans. They look very nice. Pleasant houses in quiet cul-de-sacs with open play areas. I didn’t see any shops or schools on the plans. Nor a church or a pub.”

“A pub? No, Minister, we couldn’t put a pub into this development. We had enough trouble with alcohol abuse on the old estate.”

“Shops? Schools?”

“Minister, we have to use the land as efficiently as possible. There are shops and schools on the main road. And a pub. The old estate didn’t have them. If we put them in our new development we would have to reduce the number of dwellings. We might damage the existing schools and shops.”

The Minister sighed.

(282 words)
***

2. Orange

***
Orange

The orange is longer from stalk to base than it is round. The skin has small bumps and a clear crease from the stalk. There are six creases in a star shape, five barely visible. A small scar marks the skin where it rubbed on the tree.
The skin feels and looks waxen. There are hundreds of tiny pits, inverted goosepimples, in irregular formation. The colour varies as I rotate it. At arm’s length it is uniformly orange. Closer there are delicate shades of tone and it is brighter on one side than the other. Touch magnifies the small uneven bumps.
My fingertips sense a need to wash before eating. Some of the dark imperfections rinse away. As I slit around the circumference a colourless liquid oozes. I cut twice to the stalk making a triangle. I pull it up with one finger. The peel brings away a tuft of flesh. The cream interior of the peel is matt. At the edges the rind is not even. The outer colour merges into the cream reluctantly with peaks and troughs marking the advance and retreat.
My mouth waters from the tangy smell. I bite the tuft from the triangle. I peel to reveal the segments separated by valleys with river systems. As I tear a mist from a minuscule aerosol squirts juice. My fingers glisten. I suck but get the acute taste of the orange’s zest.
The rind comes off in varying shapes and thicknesses sometimes leaving the cream layer covering the segments. Juice runs over my fingers on to the plate. I suck and bite out the triangle. The juice is sweet with a bitter aftertaste.
Too aware of the mess I am making, I slice the orange in half. I bite and suck, tearing the flesh to tattered translucent streamers. The uneaten half preserves its integrity, its segments glistening inside their wraps. The plate is slick with juice, piled with bowed peel and the remains of that once imperfect globe.
There were no pips. Surely oranges have pips? If no pips, had I bought an orange? It looked like an orange. It felt like an orange. It peeled like an orange. It tasted like an orange. Was it one?

370 words

***

The difference between those students who actually bought an orange and those who just imagined buying an orange was very significant. The orange doesn't have to be an orange. Any item would do. A Big Mac? A Coke?

Og

 

[Boota]

Thanks Ogg. I like those ideas a lot. Especially the postcard idea. That seems really free. And I already have a stack of interesting postcards that I've collected over the years. The description of the orange, or any food item for that matter, sounds really intriguing as well. Describing food demands every sense in a way that nothing else does, aside from sex.

 

[Black Tulip]

There's a really good exercise in the How To section about getting to know your characters. Could be useful too.

http://english.literotica.com/stories/showstory.php?id=51114

And for the rest, just be you. I don't give workshops on writing but I have been a teacher for more than twenty years. So long as you have fun sharing what you know, you'll be fine.
And it doesn't matter if you don't have all the answers. Makes you more human.

Good luck.

 

[Lucifer_Carroll]

You could also use this opportunity to buck the trend of writing workshops. I'm not saying don't do the writing exercises, but also be willing to give a small talk or answer questions about self-publishing and promoting and the trials and tribulations thereof. Considering a small sample of the people attending the workshop might be writers of their own type, they will likely be fully interested in someone who is trying to make it without an agent and how they went about doing that.

Taking any of the writing challenges given on the board as well would be key for the section wherein you workshop the writing of the group as the earlier posters said.

With both of those topics you won't have to worry about being undertime and might even have to worry about overtime problems.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

I've never been to a workshop but I majored in English Comp in college, so I took a lot writing classes.

The one thing we never did in class was write. Class time is too valuable to spend on writing, and since revisions are such an important part of writing, anything you write under the gun in class is going to be half-assed at best. You do your writing outside of class. Class time was for reading and critiquing.

If we were in my short fiction class and it was my turn to present, I'd have made copies of my story and handed them out in the previous class to gve people time to read it and make notes. The class would open with the professor asking people for their opinions. We might have 3 or 4 different opinions, and maybe an actual discussion would take place (always gratifying). I might then explain what I was trying to do, or ask specific questions, or maybe defend myself. People might ask me to even read sections aloud, to get an idea of how I intended the prose to sound, though I don;t like the reading aloud approach myself. It seems like cheating to me.

If I were conducting this course, I'd handle it the same way: as a place that focused on criticism and analysis, not on actual writing. If you're a writer, you don't need someone telling you what to write about. It's the critiquing and opinions that are so hard to come by. I think I might walk out on any class that spent its time writing as a waste of time. I can do that myself.

I also don't like exercises. I know I'm in the minority here, but I think the only thing most exercises are good for is to teach you how to write exercises. I suppose having a weekly assignment (i.e. write an essay on...) is the same as an exercise, but at least then you get some time to mull over what you want to write and how you want to write it. You end up with a semi-finished piece of prose. In an in-class exercise you're sitting there watching the clock, forced to put down the first ideas that pop into your mind, which are seldom the best ones. If you're like me., your first drafts are probably shit anyhow, so what's the sense in critiquing first drafts?

I have a friend who taught creative writing at Columbia College, and he says exercises are what he gave his class when he was too hungover to talk.

Anyhow, that's what I'd do. I'd go into the first class class with 2 or 3 xeroxed stories or excerpts from other writers, pass them out and let them read them, and then start discussing. I'd assign 2-4 people to have stories ready for next class, and at the second session I'd preobably give them some bullshit exercises to do for an in-class critique. Real class would begin with the 3rd session.

I'd also get some good criticial reviews of short fiction and bone up on the techniques and terminology. Your students want you to be a critic, not a coach. Anyone can tell them to sit down and describe a character. It takes talent to be able to tell them whether their description is any good and why or why not. I'd confine my criticism to style and technique. I think content is best left to a literature class.

Also, I wouldn't let them read their stories out loud. This is a writing class, not a drama class, and some very good writers are horrible readers and vice versa.

Edited to add: Lucifer's suggestion is brilliant too. They never talk about how to get published in writing classes, and that's the one thing all writers really are dying to know. How do you do it, how much do you make, how can they get started? Tell them that and yours will be the best writing class they ever had.

 

[Boota]

Thanks for your input Black Tulip, Luc, and Dr. M. All good points.

Dr. M, I think you're right about not asking them to write, now that I think about it. I'm sure they'll be more interested in the getting published - how much money type of questions. I'm going to consider all the angles and keep everything in mind, and then when I find out how long I have I'll have a jumping off point.

The main things that interest me as a writer is story and character, so I'll likely stick to that mostly. But I'm going to remain open and let things flow. Not knowing what I'm getting into I really can't try to control everything anyway.

 

[Boota]

The workshop(s) will happen at a later date. We couldn't find the time to get anything set yesterday. The lady who does the scheduling was extremely busy and we didn't get a chance to talk. I did speak to the creative writing class and that was a lot of fun. The professor gave me the whole hour and the class was very attentive during my reading and kept the discussion going with a series of great questions. They did ask some about publishing/self-publishing, but I was more pleased that we spent the majority of our time talking about the writing process.

The passage I selected was a fairly obnoxious one with a ton of vulgarity. It went over well, uncensored. I got laughs in all the right places. I should post the part I read. Even out of context it is really funny.

I have a bit more time to plan a workshop now, and that's good.

On the way home I stopped at a Borders bookstore at the Eastgate Crossing and I asked if they'd be interested in carrying my book. The manager said she'd gladly carry it. I've had good luck with Borders lately, but after the headache I initially had getting my book in stores I am still really surprised when I get anything but an emphatic "No!". (Sometimes followed by "Leave my store foul creature!") I was given a number to call and see about planning a signing at the store, so I'm going to pursue that as well.

It was a good trip.

 

[Black Tulip]

Thanks for letting us know how it went. Sounds like you did fine.
Congratulations.