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1.
Podcasting for Fun and (mostly) Nonprofit -- With the advent of
podcasting and vidcasting, nearly anyone can host their own show and
build an audience worldwide--and cheaply. Some people even make
money doing it. WV Writers' webguy, Eric Fritzius, offers an
exploratory look into some of the creative avenues to be found in the
podcasting world, covering non-fiction, fiction, not to mention the
technical side of things. (ERIC FRITZIUS)
2.
The Appalachian Inquisition – “Appalachia’s Last
Stand” -- A frank and lively discussion about the possibility of
the true Appalachia Voice and style becoming extinct as viewed and
played from the mountains and valleys of West Virginia and
Appalachia. Our discussion panel is composed of some of the
literary elite of this community, including: Denise Giardina, Irene
McKinney, Norman Jordan, Gretchen
Moran Laskas, Daniel Boyd, Kirk Judd, and Tim Poland.
3.
Hey, Slow Down, Buddy: Pacing in Fiction -- A discussion of the
more technical aspects of pacing. In instructor Tim
Poland’s experience, less experienced writers give a lot of
attention to rushing through the plot and action, that they often
overlook the things, like pacing, that allow for depth and texture in a
piece of fiction. (TIM POLAND)
4.
Assembling the Book -- A practical discussion and reading,
showing the development of a novel. Tim Poland shows us how he builds a
novel, using The Safety of Deeper Water as a backdrop of this process.
Join us in this success story, from beginning to publication. (TIM
POLAND)
5.
Get Inspired! How to Plot A Romance -- This session will shed light on
one of the most popular sub-genres in romance right now, the
inspirational romance. Plotting a romance novel in general will be
discussed. Tips will also be offered on trends and how to follow your
own voice and still produce a suitable manuscript for the romance
market. (PAM HANSON)
6.
How to Interject Humor Into Your Writing and Your Reading -- This
workshop will show you how to incorporate humor into what you write,
whether it be long pieces or short, and how to be funny, intentionally,
when you get up to read it. (PAM HANSON)
7 &
8. Tones, Timbres and Tunes (w/cont.) --
Workshops revised specifically for authors (v. songwriters), in which
Walker and Martin discuss their approach to the craft. (POPS WALKER /
KIPYN MARTIN)
9. How Do
You Publish For Children? -- Have questions about publishing
children’s books? Cheryl Ware will share her experience of
working with small and large publishers and entertain questions from
WVW participants. (CHERYL WARE)
10.
Writing Books for Young Children -- If you love picture books and
easy readers, this is the workshop for you. Ware will discuss the
format and some of the most popular picture books on the market today.
(CHERYL WARE)
11.
Writing for Middle Grade and Young Adults -- What is the
difference between middle grade, young adult, and an adult novel with a
young protagonist? Join Ware as she shares her knowledge of the
Middle Grade and YA formats and for an overview of some of
today’s most popular novels for older children and teens. (CHERYL
WARE)
12.
Genesis of a Story -- Short stories often grow from a vital nugget
(something seen, something heard, something read, something imagined)
that may be the beginning, or the turning point, or the end of the
story. In this workshop, students will learn to envision a short
story as linear, with the nugget at any point on the story line.
Through discussion and writing exercises, students will create a nugget
and extend a story from it. (JIMMY CARL HARRIS)
13.
The Where and When of a Story -- Stories are about people, but the
setting (place, time) locates the story and helps to define the
characters, establish the mood, and enhance the action. Setting may be
described or revealed through narrative or dialogue or both. By
discussing examples and participating in writing exercises, students
will learn to effectively employ setting. (JIMMY CARL HARRIS)
14.
The Opportunity to Discover -- Writing is more effective when readers
are given the opportunity to discover, rather than simply be told, the
nature and purpose of the characters. Through a series of examples and
exercises, participants will learn to write in a more evocative
fashion. (JIMMY CARL HARRIS)
15.
Collaborative Writing -- This session would explore the creative
benefits of collaboration. Collaboration could mean working with
a friend on a writing project, using someone else’s work to
inspire your own, using a prompt such as a visual image to inspire a
piece or writing, or using a piece of writing to inspire and create
something visual. We will discuss various methods of
collaboration and do a number of writing activities. (NATALIE
SYPOLT / RENÉE NICHOLSON)
16.
Linked Stories -- This session would examine the genre of linked story
collections (or novels in stories). There is some controversy
over how these books are to be viewed—is it a novel? A
story collection? Neither or both?—but what is not controversial
is their popularity. One such creation, Olive Kitteridge,
recently won the Pulitzer Prize. Here, we’ll discuss
strategies used for creating a successful collection of linked stories
and start planning out some of our own. (NATALIE SYPOLT)
17.
All Together Now: Exploring Collective Narration in Fiction -- This
session will look at the seldom used narrative technique of the
collective voice (or collective narration). This means that the
story (or novel) is narrated by a group instead of by one omniscient
narrator or one single character (take, for example, The Virgin
Suicides or Then We Came to the End). We’ll investigate the
way this technique has been used to some success, as well as discuss
the pitfalls a writer might encounter when trying to use the collective
voice. We’ll then, of course, try writing a piece of our
own. . (NATALIE SYPOLT)
18.
From Music to Music: Using the Sensory Landscape of Music in Prose and
Poetry -- Stanley Kunitz once said, "The ear writes my poems, not the
mind." In this multi-genre workshop, you'll use the power of
music to help shape either prose or poems to reflect a new sense of
musicality on the page. Attention to how the sonic qualities of
writing can develop line by line or sentence by sentence on the page
will help writers of any genre enhance their work with an underlying
sense of musicality. (RENÉE
NICHOLSON)
19.
All The Right Moves: Unleashing the Potential of Line Breaks in Your
Poems -- All poets labor over line breaks, and no two poets break the
line of a poem quite the same. Understanding what can be gained
by getting the right line breaks in your poem can help take a poem from
"good" or promising" to emotionally powerful and resonant. This
session will stress the use of line in both conventional and
unconventional ways. (RENÉE NICHOLSON)
20.
The Life Cycle of a Character -- In this workshop, the dynamic duo from
Inspiration for Writers discusses how to take a character from
conception to maturity, giving him not only life, but a life that will
live on forever in the reader's heart. We start with a
seed—the conception of a character. We germinate that seed,
slowly bringing it to life by giving our character wants and fears. We
continue to grow our character, taking him through the tumultuous teen
years by exploring his emotions and learning more about him. As our
character matures, we add more layers, exploring different aspects of
his or her personality and history. The Life Cycle of a Character
is for writers of all levels, and includes discussion and samples of
tools such as books, character charts, and growth charts. (SANDY
TRITT / RHONDA BROWNING WHITE)
21.
What's Your Line (Doing)? In this class we will explore how the
line can work, including but not limited
to: as a part of a larger unit (including the sentence); as a unit of
meaning
apart from any larger unit; linguistically; rhythmically; visually
(long,
short, interrupted). Our own ideas and practice will be the focus of
our
discussion, and theory and practice by poets like Richard Hugo (The
Triggering
Town) and Denise Levertov ("On the Function of the Line" Chicago
Review Vol. 30, No. 3. 30-36) will further inform our discussion. A
wide
variety of examples, from the Renaissance sonnet to Kay Ryan, from Dickinson to
Robert Dana,
will help us see how lines may be used to generate, guide, and/or
contain
meaning within a poem. Sample poems that have been restructured as
prose (and
what about the prose poem?!) will provide a fun exercise in discovering
formal
and organic potential for lines. Students are encouraged to bring a
poem or two
of their own for fearless revision, and, using various prompts,
students will
also begin new poems to engage, hopefully, a new-found relationship
with their
own lines. (DONNA LONG)
22. The Poetry of Norman
Jordan: A workshop of
readings and discussion from one of West Virginia’s most
eminent poets. Norman’s
work has been anthologized in Wild Sweet Notes, as well as forty-one
other
anthologies. Join us in celebrating this lyrical journey through his
words. (NORMAN JORDAN)
23.
Poetry: Using Irish Poetry to Enhance your Writing -- We will
look at some work by W.B. Yeats & Seamus Heaney for techniques to
invigorate our poems. Like Appalachian writers, these poets are
linked to a region. How can we use history, myth, and legend to
heal our relationship to "place"? (ROB MERRITT)
24.
Poetry: Taking Poetry by Heart -- We will work with different
methods for internalizing poetry by discussing methods for reading and
performing poems by established poets, then applying these techniques
to our own writing (which can offer new avenues for revision). A
poem can work powerful psychology when we let us take us where it wants
to go. Bring a poem you have written. (ROB MERRITT)
25.
Nonfiction. Journaling Techniques -- Of course you can
write whatever comes to mind in your journal, but sometimes you are
blocked or fall into a repetitive pattern. We shall try a variety
of methods- including dialoguing, drawing, writing letters, tapping
into inner wisdom- to enrich your journaling journey. (ROB
MERRITT)
26.
Agents, Editors, and You! -- An open discussion forum featuring Peter
Lynch, Christine Witthohn, Kaylan Adair, and Kelly Mortimer. These
industry professionals will discuss the do’s and don’ts of
publishing, an in depth look at the process, and maybe after this
session we can all approach editors and agents with more confidence and
be better prepared. (PETER LYNCH, KELLY MORTIMER, KAYLAN ADAIR,
& CHRISTINE WITHOHN)
27.
Lost In Translation -- This discussion-based class
will focus on how to tell our stories to people who don’t share
our mountain heritage. We will be concentrating on how to
write so that the culture and the beauty of the language comes through
without catering to stereotypes. We want people to grasp our history
without sentences that sound like footnotes. Let’s talk
about how to handle black humor, double negatives, dialect, biblical
quotations and mountain music in our work without making our readers
feel choked by a too big a swig of whiskey. Join us
to learn how to make Appalachian stories go down smooth!
(GRETCHEN MORAN LASKAS)
28.
Forensic Science: Where truth meets fiction, Part 1: Forensic
Identification -- The primary role of forensic identification is
discussed, including fingerprint, dental records, tattoo and scars, DNA
and other means of identification. All segments contain graphic images
and may not be suitable to all members. (DR. MICHAEL KANE)
29.
Forensic Science: Where truth meets fiction. Part 2: Time of Death
Estimation -- The main focus is the decomposition process and certain
physical landmarks that can help determine the time of death, such as
algor mortis, rigor mortis and livor mortis, as well as landmarks in
advance decompositions, such as bloating, discoloration, and
skeletonization and mummification. All segments contain graphic
images and may not be suitable to all members. (DR. MICHAEL KANE)
30.
Forensic Science: Where truth meets fiction. Part 3: Injury and Wound
Determinations --This segment explores injury caused by blunt-force
trauma, sharp-force trauma, gunshot and shot gun wounds. Pattern
injuries are also discussed. All segments contain graphic images and
may not be suitable to all members. (DR. MICHAEL KANE)
31.
Floaty+Groundy: A Way of Thinking About Fiction -- In this session we
will look at and discuss an original idea, one instructor Brad Barkley
has used many times as a way to think about the interface between plot
and character. We will look at why this connection feels so tricky, and
how we can use it both to diagnose already-written stories as well as
invent new ones. This session is useful for any writers of
fiction, and is particularly helpful for those stores that *seem* to be
done right, bur refuse to lift off and fly. The workshop includes
discussion and exercises. (BRAD BARKLEY)
32.
Teens Read Too: Writing Young Adult Fiction -- For those who
missed it last year, instructor Brad Barkley is repeating the workshop
wherein we discuss writing for this very specialized but
constantly-growing audience. YA is a "hot" field in publishing
right now, and this workshop will talk about ways of approaching the YA
novel, in particular, as well as selling and marketing these books.
(BRAD BARKLEY)
33. Behind
the Scenes at Candlewick Press -- A bird’s eye view of the
process of publishing a children’s or YA, from the point of
inspiration to the first case shipped to bookstores. (KAYLAN
ADAIR)
34.
How to Get an Editor to Notice You (For All the Right Reasons) --
Another good lesson and right from the editor. (KAYLAN
ADAIR)
35.
Fooling Around With Form -- In this sesson we will examine some
new "fixed" forms. If you have never ventured beyond free verse and
think writing in form would not appeal to you, this is the class for
you. We will talk about and try our hand at writing Double-jointed
Persona Poems and Embedded Poems. (DANA WILDSMITH)
36.
Writing the Personal Essay -- How is a personal essay different from
other short non-fiction pieces? What are the structural hallmarks of an
essay? In this session we will take a tour of the personal essay as a
literary form and focus particularly on its circularity, the way its
ending circles back to its beginning, but with an enlarged
perspective. (DANA WILDSMITH)
37.
Using the Essay to Make An Environmental, Social, or Political
Statement -- This session will deal with how to address personal
environmental concerns in a way that draw readers in rather than drive
them away. We will look at how the essay form lends itself naturally
(sorry about the pun) to informing readers without making them feel
preached to. As well, some of the most effective social and political
commentaries were written with gentle humor or with a storytelling
feel. In this session we will examine how to use humor and narrative to
effectively, but non-confrontationally, make a point. (DANA
WILDSMITH)
38.
Building a Screenplay for the Media -- Master film maker and
documentorist, Daniel Boyd will show the building blocks and vital
sequence to assembling a script for movies, television, and the latest
digital media. He’ll show you where to find online giveaways to
give your work that professional touch and share his vast experience as
a living success story. (DANIEL BOYD)
39.
Wrestling with the Graphic Novel! -- The ominous tag team of Daniel
Boyd and William Bitner join forces once again to bring a new, vivid
look at assembling the graphic novel. This genre is rapidly increasing
in popularity and dominance in the art/lit/movie industry and Boyd and
Bitner, now pioneering the graphic novel industry, are ready to share
their firsthand knowledge of the steps involved, the locations of free
software, and how to employ this knowledge to get it on paper. (WILLIAM
BITNER & DANIEL BOYD)
40.
Write and Get Paid! -- Can you really make a living as a writer,
without being one of the lucky few who make the New York Times
Bestseller List? Can you quit your day job, or must writing always come
last on your list of ways to earn a living? Certainly, you can
make a living—and a good one—as a writer, without having a
long list of novels under your belt. In this workshop, we’ll
explore ways to build your writing portfolio; land paying jobs as a
writer, editor or proofreader; get published; and, yes, eventually quit
the daily grind of your current job. (RHONDA BROWNING WHITE)
41.
Structure of Steel: Outlining Your Novel -- Like any impressive
building, your novel needs a firm foundation and a solid, secure
structure around which its walls are built. Learn multiple ways in
which to draw up your plan and ensure that your novel follows a logical
arrangement as you construct your story, and determine which method
works best for your style of writing. (RHONDA BROWNING WHITE)
42.
Intro to Playwriting -- Participants will discuss a variety of
approaches to the world of writing for the stage. A fun and
engaging writing activity will explore character and plot creation and
development. Additional discussion will include aspects of theatre
writing through history. No previous playwriting experience is
necessary. Just bring your pen/pencil, paper and an active
imagination. (JONATHAN JOY)
43.
Intro to Playwriting II -- Participants will move past
character and plot development into the world of creating realistic
dialogue. Two different writing activities will explore dialogue
development, as well as the descriptive elements of writing for the
stage.
(JONATHAN
JOY)
44.
From Page to Stage -- Participants will discuss the state of new
plays in America today. How does one get his/her work produced in
such a crowded market? What are the obstacles to getting a 10
minute play or a full length in front of a live audience? The
instructor will share tips for getting exposure as a playwright and
getting work produced and published to reach a wide
audience. (JONATHAN JOY)
45.
The Subtle Art of Backstory -- It's a scenario familiar to many
writers: Your first paragraph soars with a sizzling scene and you're
off to a great start, but you immediately find yourself backtracking,
explaining to the reader the character's background and motivation. And
just to be on the safe side, you figure you'd better explain the
technical stuff, too. And the next thing you know, you've smothered the
reader with an information dump. You had the right instinct in wanting
to give your readers a thoughtful plot and characters made compelling
by an understanding of their history -- their sorrows, their triumphs,
their desires. Join Belinda Anderson in a workshop filled with tips on
how to provide backstory while avoiding burdening the reader with
information dumps. (BELINDA ANDERSON)
46.
Sentence Elegance -- Sentences are the building blocks of prose, but
they also can be the stumbling blocks for a writer struggling to write
with polish. Sometimes a manuscript's problem can be pinned on plotting
or viewpoint problems. But often it's the lack of flow within and
between sentences. Learn about kernel and cumulative sentences and how
to elegantly and deftly vary your narrative. (BELINDA ANDERSON)
47.
Sentence Rhythm -- Learn how the structure of a sentence can
heighten the sense of suspense. Amaze and astound your writer friends
with your new knowledge of anophora and epistrophe. (BELINDA
ANDERSON)
48. Just
Say NO! to Passive Writing – Be an active writer! -- Don’t
let passive sentences slow your pacing and weaken your writing. Kelly
pinpoints how to search out passive sentences, and has helpful
suggestions including a 1-2-3/3-2-1 formula showing how to fix them.
(KELLY MORTIMER)
49. &
50. People’s Choice – Poetry
51. &
52. People’s Choice – Prose
53.
People’s Choice - Youth
54. Agent
to Author! -- A real conversation between an agent and her client. This
will give an insight into the side of publishing where many
pre-published writers are nervous. There are few such samples that will
give writers the confidence needed to start strong with your agent.
(CHRISTINE WITTHOHN / SHEILA REDLING)
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