Writing Workshop at the Library

This Thursday I went to a creative writing workshop at the Library. It was lead by Melanie Schnell, who teaches creative writing at the University of Regina.

She focused her talk on two essentials to writing.

1. Use imagery! She described imagery as concrete details that cause the reader to imagine. Writers need to include details for all 5 senses to create realism and feeling in their work.
2. Harness desire! A good story is not driven by what happens to characters, but what they yearn for, desire. 

Her second focus really resonated with me. In teaching the elements of fiction, I tell my students that the conflict is the engine of the story. It gives the push to move from event to event in the plot. However, conflict in this sense depends on the desires of the characters. If a character didn't want a certain thing, that character would not be invested in the conflict or the conflict wouldn't even exist. I think, instead of asking my students what the conflict is in a given story, from now on I'm going to ask them what the characters in the story want, what are their driving desires.

Of course, it cannot be a workshop without some work to do. Melanie gave us three interconnected exercises, related to her two points.

1. Describe something you do everyday by hand. Focus on using imagery.
2. Define a character by their want. Fill in this template: (Name) is a (adjective) (age)-year-old (noun) who wants ______________.
3. Rewrite the first exercise from this character's perspective.

The exercise stressed the importance of tailoring the writing to the characters in the story. Knowing what your characters are like and want, should influence how you write about them. She said that most people find the final exercise the easiest, because it's just an edit of what came before; however, the character I concocted was so different from my self that I had to start from scratch for that one and found it more difficult.

I've included what I wrote for the first exercise. It isn't finished yet as my time ran out, but I shared it at the end of the workshop and thought I'd share it here too.
 

Calendar of Facial Hair

I want to make a calendar that highlights a different type of facial hair for each month. I think Movember is great: it raises a lot of money to research men's cancer and provides a legitimate excuse to go out in public with a moustache. Why not make a whole year out of it? It could be called ΣO15!

This is what I have thought of so far:

Januhairy (I didn't think of this one. My friend, Ethan, did, but it's too good not to use.)
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Fu Marchu
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Septemburns
Goateeber
Movember
Decembeard

If you have any ideas for the rest of the months or would like a copy of the calendar after it's done, let me know it the comments.

Bad Compliments

Part of maintaining a long term relationship is compliments: letting your partner know how and what you appreciate about him or her. This is particularly true with cooking. When someone has taken time out of her/his busy day to make you food, you should be thankful and complimentary.

That being said, not all compliments are created equally. This is my bottom three list of compliments to give your spouse/partner on his/her cooking.

3. Buttery Rolls
Well, insert any adjective in front of rolls and it's still bad. Yes, a roll is another way of saying bun, but NO ONE wants to hear anything about their rolls regardless of how delicious/amazing/etc. they are.

2. This tastes great with ketchup!
I love ketchup, so this was a hard one for me to learn. Most people make food to be eaten on its own. If they want a sauce on it, it's usually cooked in or served with said sauce. Destroying an original, from-the-heart creation by drowning it in sweet, vinegary, pulverized tomatoes and then complimenting it, is a faux pas of the worst sort.

1. "This is the best X you've ever made!"
This might be a very good compliment, but you need to do some detective work beforehand. If the meal is take out, heat and serve from the grocery store, or--worst--thawed leftovers of something you, yourself, made, you are in big trouble!

Know any other bad compliments? Leave a comment and let me know.