When and where …

New York Writers Workshop in Shanghai, April 2012

Register at colorboxarts@gmail.com

http://www.colorboxarts.com/en/index.php 

Enrollment is limited to 12 students per workshop.

Workshops:

Entry Points for Fiction and Memoir

Following Through: the Next Steps in Fiction and Memoir

Story World:  Fleshing Out Place & Time in Fiction and Memoir

Entry Points for Fiction and Memoir
Thursday, April 12, 7:00-9:00pm, 200rmb

Where do you begin a story effectively? What do you do once you’ve entered the story world? Entry Points for Fiction and Memoir is a craft-based workshop that considers these questions through example, then exercise. Participants write, share (as time allows), and discuss work generated by exercises that are Incident-based, Character-based, and Setting-based; participants leave the workshop with three story openings, and suggestions for the next story steps. Through out, the conversation remains focused on issues of craft.

Following Through: the Next Steps in Fiction and Memoir
Saturday April 14 1:00-4:00pm, 300rmb

You have your story premise, your character/s setting, and opening events? now what? Following Through: the Next Steps in Fiction and Memoir picks up where Entry Points for Fiction and Memoir left off.  Through example and exercise, the workshop focuses on scene dynamics, with particular attention paid to types of dialogue. Participants move stories forward through the construction of scenes and summary narration. Progression of conflict, elaboration of theme, and effective use or discovery of symbol are also considered.

Story World:  Fleshing Out Place & Time in Fiction and Memoir
Saturday April 21, 1:00-4:00pm, 300rmb

One of the most neglected aspects in the imagination of stories (in both fiction and memoir) is setting in place and in time.   An inordinate amount of focus is placed on character and event at the expense of description and history.  But character and event can’t be fully persuasive, fully dimensional, unless they’re situated in a well- established context.  This workshop session identifies strategies for opening up story world through model and exercise.  By session’s end, your characters will be engaged with events in places and times that help complete the story picture.

Tim Tomlinson is a co-founder of New York Writers Workshop, and co-author of its popular text, The Portable MFA in Creative Writing.  Recent fiction and poetry appear or are forthcoming, online and in print, in Asia Writes, Caribbean Vistas, InterlitQ,Mandala Journal, The New Poet, the New York Quarterly, Pank, Prick of the Spindle, riverbabble, Salt River Review, and in the anthology Long Island Noir (Akashic Books).  He was featured poet in Saxifrage Press (Dec 2011).  “Blue Surge, with Prokoviev,” in Sea Stories, was nominated for Best of the Net 2011.  Tim has been running workshops since 1991, and he’s taught or consulted in the US, the UK, Italy, Thailand, Singapore, the Philippines, and now China.  He’s lived in London, Florence, Paris, Cha’am (Thailand), Manila, Boston, Miami, New Orleans, Andros Island (the Bahamas), and now Shanghai.