Incorporating Humor into Your Writing
Humor is a part of our everyday lives. It can inspire hope, relieve tension, and help connect us to one another. Learning to use humor effectively will enhance your work and may even boost your creativity by challenging you to approach your craft in a new way. Even if your subject matter is serious, the subtle use of humor can help ease tension and give your readers a chance to breathe again after an intense scene. Learning to be funny is one of the most difficult writing skills to master, but as long as you possess a sense of humor, this class will teach you the skills you need to add humor to your stories.
I appreciated Ally’s thorough feedback which touched on not only the topic of the workshop, but other writing points as well. ~Debra Brown
Tips and Techniques for More Effective Proofreading
Editing is one of the most difficult tasks a writer faces and even seasoned authors often have difficultly detecting errors in their own work. When writers proofread their own work, it’s not unusual for them to overlook errors because their mind knows how the text should read and automatically corrects it. Whether you’re polishing your manuscript for a contest, preparing to submit to an agent or editor, or planning to self-publish, knowing how to effectively proofread your work is an essential skill. This is not a grammar class, but rather focuses on what you need to know to identify errors with capitalization, punctuation, sentence structure, verb tense, dialogue, homonyms, and plural and possessive forms. At the end of class, you will have a customized proofreading checklist. A list of grammar resources will also be provided.
This workshop provided a beginning writer like me with precious tips and takeaways for ensuring success with grammar, punctuation and proofreading skills. An absolute must for my manuscript. ~Marie Timlin
Writing Compelling Characters
Characters are the key to writing a compelling story, so it is imperative that you focus on how you develop your characters. We’ll study what psychologists have identified as the Big Five Model of Personality to help create relatable characters, consider some common romance tropes and which character flaws fuel them, talk about how to give your characters a sense of humor, discuss the importance of backstory as it relates to your character’s flaws, and how these flaws are used to complete your character’s arc for a satisfying ending to your story. We’ll discuss examples from television, movies, and books to reinforce the lessons.
All of the exercises helped me better understand the characters in my own story, and as a result, I believe their motivations will be clearer, and they will be more relatable to the reader. ~Barbara Hoyt
