Inviting the Reader In and the Power of Point of View
When: 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., Sunday, June 5
Where: Historic Joy Kogawa House, 1450 West 64th Avenue, Vancouver, BC V6P 2N4
Cost: $135 (includes lunch)
To register, email kogawahouse@yahoo.ca
Short fiction’s possibilities are delightful, startling and seemingly endless. Of the vital mechanics of the form (including structure, timeframe and tense choices, narrative momentum, dialogue, character) the single-most important choice you can make in writing short fiction is deciding on what point of view (or points of view) a story should be told from. Your POV choice (together with the more elusive quality of Voice) will dictate HOW you will write WHAT you want to write.
Beginning and emerging writers often adhere unconsciously to a particular POV ― what I call the default mode (and we all have one). During this workshop you’ll discover a multiplicity of POV choices and how a story can radically shift depending on who’s doing the telling or through whose eyes we’re witnessing things from. We’ll also look at The Writer’s Voice and talk about why finding your own voice as a writer is so important.
The second most important decision you need to make is deciding Where and How to begin your story. “Begin at the beginning and go on till you come to the end: then stop,” said the king in Alice in Wonderland. We’ll look at why it isn’t that simple when it comes to short fiction.
During this workshop you’ll do writing exercises, as well as read your work out loud and discuss your writing with the class. I will provide a mini course pack that we’ll use for examples and inspiration and that you are welcome to take home with you.
Zsuzsi Gartner is the author of the critically acclaimed story collection All the Anxious Girls on Earth (Key Porter), the just-published Better Living Through Plastic Explosives (April 2011, Hamish Hamilton / Penguin Canada), editor of the BC Book Prize–nominated Darwin’s Bastards: Astounding Tales from Tomorrow (Douglas & McIntyre), and the fiction editor of Vancouver Review.
Her fiction has been broadcast on CBC and widely anthologized, most recently in Best Canadian Stories: 2010. A new story appears in the May 2011 Walrus magazine.
She is on faculty this spring with the Banff Centre’s writing program and is an adjunct professor in creative writing at the University of British Columbia.
She lives in East Vancouver, with two men, one tall, one small.
To register, email kogawahouse@yahoo.ca.