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Workshop Descriptions & Instructors
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Jim Heynen From Memory To Art: Poetry, Prose Poems, Short-Short Fiction The Loaded Conversation: Writing Effective Dialogue
From Memory To Art: Poetry, Prose Poems, Short-Short Fiction This is a workshop that begins with life experience and explores ways of transforming it through some of the options available to the verbal artist. The moment we give our attention to form¾whether that be the music and repetition we associate with poetry or the structure and narrative progression we associate with fiction what we thought was only a memory can take on new life. We’ll use the writing process itself to discover what in our experiences is calling for our attention as writers, and we’ll explore ways of seeing how memory can feed the imagination rather than limit it. Even as many prominent authors today write in a variety of forms, we’ll try different approaches to our subject as a way of finding which avenue will lead us in a rewarding direction. The Loaded Conversation: Writing Effective Dialogue How do they do it—those effective writers of dialogue? Think of Grace Paley, whose characters can say the darnedest memorable things, like “Dying young is a terrible thing, but it saves a lot of time,” or of Lorrie Moore, whose own wit is such a natural fit with her witty characters, or Cormac McCarthy, whose characters’ clipped words can emit horror in the dead space they leave around them. In the best examples we can find in fiction, dialogue is always more than a tape recorder held up to ordinary speech. It is more than character revelation. It is double-edged, triple-edged, energized by paradox and surprise. Good dialogue can be like a fish leaping out of the water or an electrical current coursing through the dry leaves of description. In this weekend, we’ll read some lively examples of dialogue. We’ll practice the art itself in many short exercises—and we’ll have a ball doing it. Biography
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by Instructor Sponsored by the Division of Continuing Education Last updated on February 11, 2008 |
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