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The Writer Workshop Weekly News #1! View this email online
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| | February 3, 2020
Issue #19 |
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Hello Writers!
The Book Club night discussion of On Writing by Stephen King resulted in a great conversation over a decent bottle of wine. Our February selection is Zen in the Art of Writing by Ray Bradbury. Copies are available at The Writer Workshop and on Amazon. You can join us for the Book Club discussion on February 27th.
This week, in addition to the weekly workshops and prompt writing events, is our Poetry Night: Thursday (7 pm). Bring a poem to read and receive feedback.
Please take note in the schedule that The Writer Workshop will be closed from February 7 until February 16.
Just a reminder: Join us on Meetup for all the latest offerings and to RSVP for workshops and classes.
As always, please reply to this message and introduce yourself and let me know what I can help you with. What types of events are you most interested in attending? What king of help would you like with writing or your road to publication?
Enjoy the journey!
Gregory
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Events: January 13-19
Monday, 2/3: 7 pm Writer Workshop ($5) Tuesday, 2/4: 7pm Fiction through Prompts ($10) Wednesday, 2/5: 1pm Writer Workshop ($5) Wednesday, 2/5: 7pm LGBTQ+ Writer Workshop ($5) Thursday, 2/6: 7pm Book of the Month Discussion (Free) Friday, 2/7: CLOSED Saturday, 2/8: CLOSED Sunday, 2/9: CLOSED
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| | Choose Words with Intention
by Gregory A. Kompes
Use the right word. Find the right word and revise it. Determine the desired meaning, usually from a weak word. Don’t be lazy about the revised selection. Dig deep into your brain. Don’t just settle for the first word. Don’t settle for was or blue or table. Don’t be indolent or lax. Take a moment. Think. Dig. Try a few choices. Roll the choices around in your brain, on your tongue, in the sentence, in the scene, in the greater meaning of life.
Think about whether your character would say it that way, would use that word, would even think that word to describe his grandmother’s doilies. Let your characters drive you, motivate you to choose crochet instead of knitted. Use their diction in that tight-third scene to choose yarn over fiber. Use their experience in that first-person narrative to choose a better word over your first word.
See it, hear it, smell it as they would. Express those ideas and thoughts in their voice, in their diction, using their meaning of the words you choose.
Understand the world you’re creating from the character’s perspective. Take the time to see the world through their eyes; take the time to explore the world and the motivations of each character based on their background and their upbringing. Know that that background and upbringing is, generally, different from your own. Know that it’s probably very different from your own background.
Go deeper now, think about a stronger verb, delete those weak words and reach for stronger words. Write words that are specific, that engage, that paint pictures through the senses with color and smell and sound. Evoke feeling through the words you choose, but not through weak words like think and felt. Evoke feeling through showing with specifics: gauzy, yellowed-lace curtains sucked out through the window as the temperature plummets twenty degrees in a few seconds while nickel-sized hail pelted the battered old house.
Show us don’t tell us. Help the reader live the experience through specific, special, meaningful words. Let the reader breath in the frigid, wet air, hike the four-hundred stone steps toward the peak of the Great Wall, smother in the steamy, over-heated stone sauna.
You see it better now, yes? Choose Pekinese instead of dog; choose crimson or scarlet or cherry or ruby instead of red or cerulean or sapphire or indigo instead of blue. Choose shades and tastes and colors and place names that are specific and evoke deeper meanings not only for the reader, but for the character experiencing them in your writing.
Write the character from their perspectives and background and education and thoughts and fears and loves and hatreds. Writer those characters into settings described based on how they see their world, or the world they now find themselves in. Take advantage of this to not only describe the scene, but to more fully develop the character.
Get into their heads and hearts and souls by choosing meaningful, deep, luscious words that drip with intention.
Do your job with every word you choose. Choose words one by one that have multiple layers of meaning, words a scholar or student must pick apart and suck on to gather their full taste and meaning.
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| | | February Book Club Selection
Zen in the Art of Writing
by Ray Bradbury
"Every morning I jump out of bed and step on a land mine. The land mine is me. After the explosion, I spend the rest of the day putting the pieces back together. Now, it's your turn. Jump!" Zest. Gusto. Curiosity. These are the qualities every writer must have, as well as a spirit of adventure. In this exuberant book, the incomparable Ray Bradbury shares the wisdom, experience, and excitement of a lifetime of writing. Here are practical tips on the art of writing from a master of the craft-everything from finding original ideas to developing your own voice and style-as well as the inside story of Bradbury's own remarkable career as a prolific author of novels, stories, poems, films, and plays. Zen In The Art Of Writing is more than just a how-to manual for the would-be writer: it is a celebration of the act of writing itself that will delight, impassion, and inspire the writer in you. In it, Bradbury encourages us to follow the unique path of our instincts and enthusiasms to the place where our inner genius dwells, and he shows that success as a writer depends on how well you know one subject: your own life.
Get your copy today at The Writer Workshop or Amazon |
| | Fiction Through Prompts
The popular Fiction through Prompts. Each session includes writing to a “high end” prompt, reading our work, receiving a bit of feedback, and a short lecture on a literary device.
This weekly event allows you to step outside your box, to disrupt your usual thought process by writing to a prompt without advance thought. You hear the prompt, and then write for about 20 minutes. Participants then read their work and receive a bit of light feedback. It's an informative and sometimes transformation process.
Tuesday, February 4 at 7 pm ($10) |
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