Welcome to the Wordshop- A Word Workshop

Receiving feedback can be difficult, especially if you are attached to your work or sensitive to criticism. However, feedback should be seen as an opportunity to learn and grow. To make the most of feedback, it is important to be open and receptive, selective, critical, grateful and responsive. Listen to the feedback with an open mind, and don't get defensive or angry. Evaluate the feedback and decide what is relevant, useful, and valid for your work. Show appreciation for the feedback giver's input as long as it is thoughtful and presented with an attitude of being helpful. Don't argue, dismiss it or become defensive of your work. Think about it, then take the advice or ignore it. 

1. You may resist rules, hate them or uphold them but no matter your personal attitude toward rules for writing; no matter if you hope to publish or just share your writing with friends and family, it’s wise to know a few basic ‘rules’ before you choose to ignore or break them. 

• Poetry & Prose
• Fiction (ex. sci-fi, mystery/crime romance, romance, horror, fantasy)
• Non-fiction (ex. memoir, autobiography, biography, essay)
• Drama (play-writing)
• Prose

Here are three examples:

• Flash Fiction and Flash Non-Fiction go from six to 1,500 words. 
• Short Stories are over 1,000 words, and usually less than 10,000. 
• Non-fiction Self-Help and Personal Growth should be between 60 – 80,000 words

Are you a Pantser, Planner or Planster? For many writers the hardest part of writing is, well, writing! Having ideas comes easy. What separates writers from the rest of the world is that we are the people who sit down day after day and actually write. But how do you do that? Are you a Pantser, a Planner or a Plantser?

Who will likely read your poem, play, story or book?

As a writer you need to know if you want your writing to be shared with audiences beyond your friends and family. If you ever plan to self-publish, hybrid publish or traditionally publish you go will have to write a proposal and one major piece of it will be the answer to - ‘Who is your reader.” You will need to be able to narrow down and specify your audience demographics. Here’s some things you will need to consider:

Audience Demographics 

• What does this audience read?
• What does this audience value?
• What does this audience struggle with?

The phrase “writer’s voice” sounds cute, but what the heck does it mean? It includes the following: 

• Your style of writing 
• Your perspective 
• Your tone

The past, present and future walk into a bar - - - it was tense. Here are examples of present and past tense:

• Present Tense: I feel the crunch of trash under my feet as I take a few steps forward and stop at the front door hanging lopsided from the hinges. 
• Past Tense: Emile D’ Costa was in the intensive care ward at Farmington Memorial Hospital. He was alive, but barely. 

Point of view means the perspective from which a story is told. The most popular POV for fiction is third person, using pronouns, he, she, they, and gender-neutral, third-person pronouns. With first person POV, the reality shared with readers is limited to this one character.  Here are two examples:

• Third Person POV: Bako knelt on the rocky ledge. Tension held his body still but released his hands to focus on what he needed to do. 
• First Person POV: My name is Francesca Williams. Everybody calls me Frankie. The woman who gave birth to me named me Angelina. 

If your characters (human or other) are the essential components of a project or story, then the events that happen to them form the plot. Anne Lamott in her book Bird by Bird explains the to-do’s for plotting as being similar to telling a joke. You start with the setup, follow with the buildup and end with the payoff - the climax and resolution. 

Your first sentence and the two or three that follow can:

• Introduce the ideas or character/s
• Hint at the setting
• Foreshadow or reveal the tension or conflict
• They should ‘GRAB’ the reader’s interest.

Here’s one example from Mashima Baily and John Morisano’s book the Black, White and The Grey: 

“I had nowhere else to turn. Moments before, I was content, with my friends and colleagues from The Grey. Laughing. And in a split second that was taken away.” 

One way to advance your story or play is to make your characters distinct from each other and real to the readers is through effective use of dialogue. Here are three of the most well-known 10 rules of writing dialogue

• Break up dialogue with action and body language 
• Use said (or asked)– if and when needed – keep it simple. If it’s clear who’d talking – you can omit said/asked.
• Make sure your characters sound different - so the reader always knows who’s talking

There are three types of editing: 

• Developmental
• Copyediting
• Proofreading

 A good editor will evaluate your project as a whole and identify areas where you may need a re-write or change. And with a good give and take (necessary because not every editor is ‘in your head’ and you may need to educate them about the purpose of your project and what the narrative is designed to do).

The Fishbone Diagram is a tool for organizing your writing project. It can be used to help you plan a story before you write it or to edit and organize a story or project you have already drafted.