Workshop: Fiction
This workshop is full. Please click the register button below to add yourself to the waitlist or email taryn@mainewriters.org.
CHARACTERS WE CAN’T STOP CARING ABOUT
Fiction Writing with Gregory Brown
A piece of fiction writing is only as strong as its characters. Works filled with people we can relate to, despise, envision, or believe in simply hit us harder and resonate for longer. I’ve found that the characters I’ve carried with me for the longest as a writer and a reader are the ones firmly entrenched on what I call the “desire-and-vulnerability axis.” The best characters have to want something, at both the surface and deeper emotional levels, and they have to let us see their fears. But, at a technical level, how do we build honest, interesting, and emotionally compelling characters on the page?
In this workshop, we will read each other’s stories and novel chapters with an eye toward character, mainly allowing ours to want, to let us in, to push us away, and to pull us back. In addition to discussing and workshopping our own characters, we’ll read excerpts of scenes that draw compelling characters quickly and unpack how and why they work. And we’ll explore several craft tactics for deepening characterization: from dialogue, to point of view, to narrative action, to interiority and its ability to create tension.
SUBMIT
Participants are asked to please submit in advance a fiction manuscript or (a story or novel excerpt) up to 2,500 words.
Please submit these materials by no later than 9:00 a.m. on April 24. Please email the manuscripts as attachments to taryn@mainewriters.org with the subject line: “Brown BLACK FLY MSS.” *Word files are preferred, but you may also send a PDF.
Gregory Brown is the author of the novel The Lowering Days, which was a Publishers Marketplace 2021 Buzz Book, a Goodreads best debut novel, a Library Journal best debut novel, longlisted for the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award, and winner of an AudioFile Magazine Earphones award. His short stories have appeared in Tin House, The Alaska Quarterly Review, Shenandoah, Epoch, and Narrative Magazine, where he was a winner of the 30Below Prize. His non-fiction has appeared in The New York Times, The Chicago Tribune, LitHub, The Rumpus, and The Millions. A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, he has received fellowships from the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, the Napa Valley Writers' Conference, the Sewanee Writers' Conference, and MacDowell. He grew up along Penobscot Bay and still lives in Maine with his family. He grew up along Penobscot Bay and still lives in Maine with his family.