.@tithenai#WXR18
Audience questions: Why people don’t like poetry? High school English, rigidity of form, why is ambiguity a feature and not a bug, extraneous to story (e.g. LotR: @tithenai disagrees), make you work
.@tithenai#WXR18
Talking about her experience writing a poem at the age of 7, parents were overjoyed about her art, to be a poet is a responsibility in her family to speak truth to power, following grandfather who wrote humorous poetry while incarcerated
.@tithenai#WXR18
How is poetry different than prose? Poetry has rhythm, lines & stanzas, more fluid, different structures, evocative instead of denotative, smaller chunks, distilled, ignores grammar rules etc… but all of these are part of prose as well. This is a toolbox.
.@tithenai#WXR18
Distinction: The difference between poetry and prose is the difference between singing and speaking. Literally different parts of the brain. Singing is unnatural, breaking of the social contract, intimacy/vulnerability on display
.@tithenai#WXR18
Poetry breaks/dislocates language into its meaning. -paraphrased from TS Eliot
Fantasy breaks reality into truth. -@tithenai
.@tithenai#WXR18
Exercise: take a piece of your own fiction where you are stuck, take the sentence where you are stuck and write poetry from it. Reads a poem for inspiration and lets us go for 15 minutes.
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.@mauricebroaddus#WXR18
What is key to dialogue? 1. Pay attention to how people speak.
Exercise: record a family conversation and transcribe what people say. Different generations, ages, backgrounds. Start to see how people talk. eg Gilmore Girls, Joss Whedon, Quentin Tarantino
.@mauricebroaddus#WXR18 2. Good dialogue only evokes how people really talk. You don’t want to write how people really talk (um, uh, cussing). Straddle the line between how people really talk and how we wish they’d talk.
.@dongwon#WXR18
Authors vs Writers. Anyone can be a writer. Big achievement! craft skills. MFA, writer’s groups. A professional author is a different job: career management, workflow, deadline/time management, networking, marketing and promotion, PITCHING.
.@dongwon#WXR18
Always be pitching. Your pitch is not only for agents, it’s also for publishers, editors, marketing/publicity, sales. Build a readership, network with your peers, connect with booksellers, convince your family. A good pitch is a key element of achieving goals.
K Tempest Bradford .@tinytempest Description, Language, and Writing Inclusive Fiction #WXR18
.@tinytempest#WXR18
These are things she’s learned, not things she knew. Ask, learn.
.@tinytempest#WXR18
Exercise: shows two pictures of two women and asks us to describe what they look like. Describing people who don’t look like you is another craft skill. Identity markers that students don’t usually touch on: race, class, religious status.
Up next! @PiperJDrake Piper J. Drake - Incorporating Romantic Elements in Any Story #WXR18 (there are handouts and one is labelled explicit! :O)
.@PiperJDrake#WXR18
What are romantic elements? Any moment that creates intimacy between characters. Sex =/= intimacy. Need intimacy to create a believable romance. Your reader will start to ‘ship that couple and that is gold.
.@PiperJDrake#WXR18
Both romances and thrillers are emotional rollercoasters. Romance is about hope. Thriller is about justice. Both create strong emotional bonds between the readers and characters.
Next up: .@MaryRobinette Mary Robinette Kowal - Diagnosing Story Problems #WXR18
.@MaryRobinette#WXR18
Writer’s block can be a way of diagnosing that something’s gone wrong with a story. Four reactions: 1) drowsy: suddenly sleepy; 2) staring: how long can I look at the blank screen without putting words down; 3) restless: why am I suddenly in the kitchen?
.@MaryRobinette#WXR18
Drowsy writer's block: your story is boring you. back up to the last point that excited you and make a different, more dynamic choice.
.@TheDanWells Dan Wells “First Chapters, First lines”. He's talking SUPER FAST so this is going to be a slightly delayed livetweet stream as I frantically take notes. #wxr18
@TheDanWells .@TheDanWells#WXR18 Early writers freak out over first chapters. Chillax. Just write whatever and come back and fix it later. or keep going til it gets good and cut the bad parts later. or Pantser: write chapter 1 last. however it works
.@TheDanWells#WXR18 What is the purpose of a first chapter? Better: what is the first chapter supposed to accomplish. 1. introduce the book; 2. make us love the main character; 3. Grab the reader's attention.