Where: Trinity Center for Urban Life (French Room), 22nd & Spruce Streets, Philadelphia
When: Saturday, April 16, 9 – 5
Fee: $75 includes all-day workshop and lunch (max. 20 participants); $65 for students, seniors.
Writing a novel requires more than just endurance-it requires using familiar tools in an unfamiliar way to solve narrative problems. Bring your complete, in-progress, or long-abandoned novel to this daylong trouble-shooting workshop. We’ll tackle the mental blocks that keep us fixed instead of finished, and practice new strategies for planning, plotting, and pacing a novel-length work.
You will be asked to submit the first and last pages of your novel draft, plus a 1-page (250-word) synopsis before the workshop. You will be asked to bring a paper or electronic copy of your novel draft to the workshop for your reference during our series of hands-on exercises.
Who should take the workshop? This workshop will help the writer who has completed the first or second draft of a novel, and who is ready to “re-see” the work in order to find the best, most compelling way to tell the story.
The workshop will teach:
* How divergent thinking aids the process of revision.
* Using your novel synopsis as a writing tool.
* Establishing authority and fulfilling promises in your opening and closing chapters.
* Clarifying character and conflict.
* Effective plotting of key scenes.
ABOUT THE INSTRUCTOR
[img_assist|nid=5771|title=Elizabeth Mosier|desc=|link=node|align=left|width=100|height=68]Elizabeth Mosier is the author of the novel, My Life as a Girl (Random House), and numerous short stories and essays published in magazines including Seventeen, Child, and Poets and Writers. A graduate of the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College, she teaches writing in a variety of settings, including Bryn Mawr College.
To learn more about registering, please email christine@philadelphiastories.org. NOTE: We are only accepting 20 students for this workshop on a first-come, first-serve basis.