Executive Summary
This course will teach you how to create memorable characters. Characters can make or break your story. Creating a memorable and intriguing character is often the difference between an agent or an editor deciding to commit several days of her life to read 450 pages, or putting your manuscript down. Attendees are encouraged to bring excerpts of their work for reading aloud, comment and critique. Questions will be welcomed.
Faculty
John Hough, Jr.
is the author of the novels A Two Car Funeral, The Guardian, The Conduct of the Game, The Last Summer and Seen The Glory: A Novel Of The Battle Of Gettysburg. He is also the author the non-fiction works A Peck of Salt, A Dream Season, and A Player For a Moment. He is a former speech writer for United States Senator Charles Mathias and a former writer for the New York Times while serving as the assistant to James Reston. John is an experienced writing teacher and coach. He resides on Martha's Vineyard.
Tuition
The $495.00 tuition includes a continental breakfast, breaks, lunch with faculty, a detailed manual which can be retained as a bookshelf reference, and a dynamic learning experience.
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Schedule
- Thursday, October 22, 2009
Thursday, October 22, 2009
7:00-8:00Registration and Continental Breakfast
8:00-9:00The Importance of Character in Fiction: What do the works of Shakespeare and Robert B. Parker have in common?
The construction of a novel can begin with character as well as with a story line. If a character or characters are good, story inevitably follows, because every character has one. We will discuss the importance of character in fiction; to what extent is good fiction dependent on good characters, and why?
9:00-10:00Action is Character: The surest, most effective way to write character
F. Scott Fitzgerald said this famously, and there is no better rule for writing memorable characters. Characters are what they do. They define and reveal themselves in every action and reaction, in every choice and decision. Attendees will be instructed in the difference between writing characters externally and writing them from the inside, and the uses of both in revealing character. When is it sufficient to let a character's actions speak for themselves, and when not?
10:00-10:15BREAK & NETWORKING OPPORTUNITY
10:15-11:00Action is character, dialogue is action
Attendees will receive a crash course in the art of using dialogue to define and reveal character. We will discuss the difference between dialogue in real life and the dialogue in fiction. The difference is enormous.
11:00-12:00Idiosyncrasy: What Long John Silver, Sherlock Holmes, Ignatius J. Reilly, Augustus McCrea, and just about anyone in a novel by Charles Dickens have in common. Memorable characters are unique, and uniqueness is very often comprised of idiosyncrasy. What is idiosyncrasy, and what are its uses in writing fiction?
12:00-1:00LUNCH PROVIDED WITH FACULTY
1:00-2:00Plausability: He wouldn't say that-or would he?
Implausibility can infect an entire work of fiction like a virus. What makes a fictional character plausible or implausible in the first place? To what extent can the writer rely on the reader's willing suspension of disbelief? Know your characters. If you do, truly, then you will know what they can, or cannot, plausibly do, say, or think.
2:00-3:00Ambiguity: Is his name really Jimmy Blevins?
Some characters, in some cases, must necessarily have a certain mystery about them. They are written from the outside, obviously, and while there is doubt as to their motives, pasts, or truthfulness, they must be vivid and alive, they must be convincing as characters. Is it necessary for the writer to know the unrevealed truth about them?
3:00-3:15BREAK & NETWORKING OPPORTUNITY
3:15-4:15Harry Angstrom, Pea Eye Parker, Quoyle, Hawk, Roy Hobbs-What's in a name?
Naming a character can be difficult and it can be easy, and there's no set way to do it. Where do our characters' names come from, and what are the constraints on our choices? How is a character referred to in the narrative, by his first or last name? It makes a difference. There is also the choice of the third person pronoun; when is it the best choice? How do these choices affect your readers' relationship with your characters?