Denman Island Readers & Writers Festival

Instructor: Jack Hodgins

Topic: An examination of the techniques useful to writers of fiction or narrative nonfiction and a discussion of each participant’s own work-in-progress.

Class limit:10

Time: five days, Monday - Friday, July 11 - 15, 2011, 9:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.

Place: Denman Island Arts Centre

Fee: $350.

Please bring: pens, notebook/paper, a favourite book on writing (if you have one), 11 copies of the first page of a narrative you’ve written or are writing, and 11 copies of a recent piece of your own fiction (or other narrative) of anywhere between 10 and 20 pages that you would like to see critiqued by the workshop.

If you are working on what may become a book-length narrative, please bring either your first chapter or a particularly challenging chapter, plus a very brief outline or description of the whole (even if it is still only an indefinite plan).

Please expect:

1. •to discuss work submitted by others
   

2. •to be respectfully silent while we talk about your work (save questions for later)
   

3. •to participate in occasional writing exercises
   

4. •to ask the questions that are important to you
   

5. •to talk about successful techniques you have noticed in writing you have admired
   

6. •to tell others why a favourite book on writing is worth reading
   

7. •to experiment with techniques we discuss
   

8. •to benefit from the instructor’s experience by asking questions
   

9. •to work with others who may be more or less experienced than you
   

Some topics to be discussed:

1. •How do we recognize when a story is worth telling?
   

2. •How important is place?
   

3. •What makes a good opening passage?
   

4. •When should we write summary narrative, when exposition, and when scenes?
   

5. •What makes a successful scene?
   

6. •What makes for good dialogue?
   

7. •How important is plot?
   

8. •Do we need to concern ourselves with theme?
   

9. •What is involved in rewriting?
   

10. •What happens to my writing if I submit it to an editor or publisher?
    

11. •What makes for an appropriate and inviting beginning to a work of some length?
    

fiction: novels, novellas, short stories, short-shorts, allegories, tall-tales...

nonfiction narratives: biographies, memoirs, histories, travelogues...

REPEAT PARTICIPANTS SHOULD BE AWARE THAT SOME ASPECTS OF THE PROGRAM WILL BE SIMILAR TO THE 2009 WORKSHOP.

Once you have successfully registered, please submit to the registrar (by June 27) a copy of the work you wish to have discussed in the workshop.

www.jackhodgins.ca