Upcoming Events

I wanted to share two events on my calendar that might interest you.

On March 13 I begin a 6 week class on Tuesday evenings from 6:30-8:30. Crafting Characters that Connect will meet on the main campus of Central Piedmont Community College. The course focuses on the basic principles involved in writing compelling, three-dimensional characters for short and long narratives. Students will examine character depth and growth, write dialogue, learn to identify a character’s wants and needs and complete a character’s autobiography. For more information and to register, go to the CPCC website. 



On March 16-17 I will be participating in the fourth annual Write 2 Ignite Conference in Greenville, S.C. On Saturday I have the privilege of being one of the keynote speakers; you can find  more information about "Humility in the Marketplace" here.


There are a number of great workshops to choose from.  Among them, Joyce Hostetter and I will co-lead a workshop, Using Life Experiences to Pump Up Your Writing on Friday evening and on Saturday I'll be leading a mini-version of my CPCC class and cover the highlights of Crafting Characters that Connect. 


Write 2 Ignite is holding a special contest until January 31st. Check it out for the opportunity to win a critique as well as Terry Burn's book, A Writer's Survival Guide to Publication.  And if finances are a problem, make sure you check out the scholarships which are being offered. 


If you have any questions about either of these events, feel free to leave me a comment or write to me at cbaldwin6@carolina.rr.com. 


Hope to see you at one of these events!

Crafting Characters that Connect- Part 1

To prepare for my Central Piedmont Community College class on "Crafting Characters that Connect" I am reading several excellent essays in the anthology Creating Fiction (Associated Writing Programs, 1999). I thought I'd share some tidbits with you over the scope of several blogs.

First up are some quotes from "Icebergs, Glaciers, and Arctic Dreams: Developing Characters" by Kim Edwards on using your life experiences and emotions.

"For a character to be convincing, what's on the page must somehow evoke knowledge that extends beyond what's strictly visible." (p. 45)

"When [Raymond] Carver ....says that 'everything we write is, in some way, autobiographical,' he doesn't mean that authors stay close to true events when they write--indeed, to do so can actually rob a character of the freedom to react in a natural and individual way--but rather that there's a clear relationship between the events of the world and the events of a story. Art doesn't imitate life but grows directly from it."
.......

"Even when an author has not experienced what her character is experiencing, she can find parallel events and emotions in her own life on which to draw." (p. 47)

"Writers leap from the particular experiences of their own lives to the universal emotions and states of mind those experiences reflect. From there they can particularize the experience once again, into the life of the imagined character." (p. 48)

Creating Fiction ends each instructive chapter with writing exercises. Looks like I'll be adding this book to my bookshelf of writing resources.  

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