Instead of thinking, “I want my reader to feel sad,” I needed to show how I felt the day I learned another girl thought of my boyfriend as hers. I sat in his car outside my school and told him I would not play second fiddle to anyone, and I cried, ...
Creative Writing and Memoir Writing Class Notes March 31, 2021
Remember, however, that the story’s action and its characters are vehicles through which the reader creates her own emotional experience. AND the goal is not to get the readers to feel everything as the character does but to stimulate the reader to consider his or her own response.
Creative and Memoir Writing March 17, 2021
When you are writing memoirs, your job is to recreate dialogue, not create it. Sometimes, that means you cannot remember exactly what you said. In that situation, you can recreate it, getting as close as you can to what actually was said and what and how your character would have said it.
Creative Writing and Memoir/Nonfiction Writing Class Notes
March 10, 2021 Taught by Carol Brennan King Creative Writing: today we focused on using white space, lines, and punctuation as tools to help us communicate our stories. We also talked about how using breath units, or the words we want to be read in one breath, help us reach our reader to interpret the…Read more Creative Writing and Memoir/Nonfiction Writing Class Notes
7 Tips for Literary Fiction and Nonfiction Writers
The emphasis in on the character, his or her feelings, motivations, and interior life. A clear plot may exist but the interior life of the character is of as much importance as is the plot in importance.
Trying Something New in our Creative Writing and Memoir Classes
prompts can free our creativity, giving us opportunities to think about different words and how to use them in fresh ways. Then we talked about How to use prompts.
Digesting the Quarantine or Making Sense of the Quarantine
I have trouble praying that God would end the pandemic and end the political mess.
Creative Writing/Memoir Class Notes
It's important to note that guidelines may vary a little based on who you talk to or what you read, but by following the ones stated above, you will ensure sure that your manuscript looks clean, is easy to read and won't get rejected because of sloppy formatting.
Creative Writing and Memoir Class Notes
Give the person a deadline for when you need the manuscript back – if you are giving them the manuscript to them and not reading it to them. Give them a reminder a day or two before your due date. You might say, “I have worked out for Wednesday to be my manuscript workday, so I would appreciate what you have been able to do for me before Wednesday.
Creative Writing and Memoir Writing
Keep a journal for exploring how you feel about your writing, for writing exploratory short pieces, paragraphs, poetry, even as a portable tool to chase what comes to you when it comes to you. Then, if and when you want to, rewrite the entries in a much more polished book format,
Creative Writing and Memoir Writing
The point is that this is your writing space, your office as an author, and you and your body know that when you go to this place, it means work.
Creative Writing/ Memoir Class Notes
If you want to publish a book, you have to develop an audience to buy your book. You do that by building a platform - a tool you use to promote yourself and sell your writing. Your writing platform proves your ability as a writer to promote and sell your books.
Creative Writing and Memoir Class Notes
Nov. 4, 2020 Carol Brennan King Note class changes next week: Creative Writing will be from 9-11am and Memoir will be from 2-4pm. Assignments Creative Writing: We talked about seven emotions: joy, anger, worry, anxiety, sadness, fear, and fright. For next week, write a short piece that shows your character(s) experiencing emotions. The point is…Read more Creative Writing and Memoir Class Notes
Creative Writing/Memoir Class Notes October 7, 2020 by Carol Brennan King
Do you choose to make your point by developing one issue ata a time or do you put lots of "nuts" in there and let your reader sort them out? I am not sure readers like guessing.
Creative Writing and Memoir Class Notes
By creating intention, you allow the reader a perspective that pulls them deeper into the story. There must be yearning and desire
Listening to My Body 9/24/2020
Carol Brennan King An essay for a class I am taking: I lean into the room to hear, to find sounds to write about, but all I hear is the sound of air being sucked through a small floor fan then pushed through the room toward the dehumidifier. Ostensibly, they work together to circulate the…Read more Listening to My Body 9/24/2020
Creative Writing and Memoir Class Notes
Remember that people choose to look and act and do the things they do because it makes sense to them. You must know or find out why it makes sense to them.
Fall Writing Classes taught by Carol Brennan King
every writer should carry a small notebook in which to record anything curious that they hear or see on a given day. Think of these as story prompts you can use later.
My Foot Hurts and My Heart
Why offend someone even before they have an opportunity to meet our loving God?
Helps, this post is full of helps and inspirations!
I learned an important lesson checking one resource out. A loo, understood by some as the bathroom, didn't always mean that. An embarrassing mistake I almost made.
Hymns are Never Sung Alone
It came to me that we were with a chorus of believers singing through history, from what I thought then was the late nineteenth century, based on the language of the hymn.
Vacation, Only write what you cannot keep inside!
What I knew was that I loved writing. Or maybe I loved feeling and that made me want to write. I remember often the day that we took a ride into the mountains,
“Sit Still and Be Quiet”
So, if you have to “sit still and be quiet” a lot, what do you do? You think. You go places in your head. You rehearse past injustices (being honest here) and remembered or anticipated joys, depending on which holiday had just passed or was to come.
ADA LIMÓN said “I suppose anything is possible if you can eventually find a way out.” What do you think?
I remember standing in the dark room (that’s how I remember it that Christmas eve) pulling my pants off so I could slide into that mortifying gown that reveals more than it conceals. I remember standing there thinking, “This is not going to be fun
Getting Started as a Writer: My Way by Carol Brennan King
But I learned this, you can learn what I paid significant amounts of money to learn, by going to writers' conferences, joining writing groups, taking classes at the library. and hanging out around this part of my blog.
Editing Class 3, July 15, 2020
Honesty here: my weaknesses are so, then, that and just. Then seem to go with my tendency to write long-run-on sentences.
Self-Editing Class Notes Class 2 July 8, 2020
Read it out loud, and to an audience or person who if possible who will tell you the truth, not just say, “That was great.”
A Meditation: on Prayer July 2, 2020
I find this useful as a guide to help me pray, especially when I need God's help. Or honestly, a way to get started when my mind is full of distractions.
Things I wrote when no one was looking July 1, 2020
Ah, perhaps it might make tomorrow possible. But art makes tomorrow pleasurable, so it cannot be wrong and I must not feel guilty.
The Blessing That Came To Me
by Carol Brennan King June 19, 2020 I have been taking a Meditation and Writing Class this week and today the prompt was this: The ---------that came to me: The teacher said just fill it in anyway that makes sense for you. Perhaps words like person, idea, blessing....and honestly, I don't know what came after…Read more The Blessing That Came To Me
Building a Setting for your story or novel
The emphasis this week is the setting, likening it to building a house, and you can't do either one if you don't know what belongs where.
Meditation on My Body: Thankfulness
I feel my body growing tense so this must be important that I explore this because I am seeing a place of neglect.
Meditation and Writing Days 1 and 2
but they thought their own writing could not really matter because no one asked to hear it again. No one wanted to listen to the heart beating in every word.
Zoom Class: Writing a Scene
Real-time momentum means what happens, what is said, and how does the character interact with the setting and characters.
Great Storytelling
Now, once you explore why you feeling that way, consider how you can use that scenario to inform your story.
Continuing Your Stories
For instance: Susan ran down the stairs, her heels slowing her only a little, but she knew she had to get there before he did. She stepped out onto the shiny rain-washed streets, the restaurant and bar windows flashing neon red and blue streaks lighting the way to her car.
Slice of Memoir Workshop
Remember, your memoir should have a takeaway. It should have some bits that your reader could identify with.
Playing with Poetry May 2020
...students did remarkable work. I wish you could have been there via Zoom to hear what they produced in the few minutes allotted to group work.
Flash Fiction Workshop May 6, 2020
Maybe the old man was crazy. Maybe he should call the police, or at least, check with the old guy’s wife, or maybe he should just go over there and see if he could help somehow.
How Deep Do You Sing?
All of a sudden, I couldn’t sing anymore. I just wasn’t sure the words were true or right for me. So I stood there and shut up.
The Class Ends, But the Writing Goes On
“Li,” he said. “If you see a snake, just scream ‘Li’, and a Chadian will come and kill it.”
You must start somewhere!
I can't tell you what a help it is to have a built-in editor who highlights spelling errors or punctuation errors and tells you how to fix them?
Quarantine Cookies by Carol Brennan King
Then it got so cold. And the snow fell and blew and the clouds hid the sun and I had a serious attack of quarantine fever.
Conflict: The Life Blood of Every Story April 11, 2020
Watch for the arrival of conflict and how it affects people and how they deal with it. This exercise will help you a great deal when you write your own stories.
Writing Humor
But we don’t have to live in that darkness and sadness and dread. We are forgetting one of God’s greatest gifts to us: humor.
Pandemic: Writing It Real: For Fiction and Nonfiction Students
I’d never really seen someone steal before, and I wasn’t sure what to do. All I could think of was that poor old lady. That poor old lady.
March 26, 2020 Book for the Moment: 50 Days of Hope
If you have to have cancer, this is the one to have.” But we live in the age of google and OK, the first news didn’t sound bad, but the more I explored the possibilities, the less I liked this leukemia, even if it was the “one to have.”
Blindsided by God
What makes this book especially good is that Chin doesn’t try to preach at you, or say how nothing discouraged him because after all, he had God.
Creative Writing and Memoir Writing
This will be a different post, with resources I mentioned in class and some new ones that you may find helpful now and in the future.
Creative and Memoir Writing Class Notes
By Carol Brennan King April 14, 2021 Creative Writing In Creative Writing today, we talked about some writing exercises for richer character, material that came originally from https://www.nownovel.com/blog/creative-writing-exercises-character/ Today we discussed the first three exercises. Play ‘head, and shoulders, knees, and toes.’ Think about what your character looks like, starting at the head, then downwards,…Read more Creative and Memoir Writing Class Notes
Creative Writing and Memoir Writing
Creative Writing and Memoir Classes March 24, 2021 This first part of our class notes today is to all of you! You are writers. Do you behave that way? Do you plan your day for writing? I am suggesting that you set an appointment with yourself and your writing space three to five days a…Read more Creative Writing and Memoir Writing
Creative Writing and Memoir Class Notes
Yes, memoirs are still the stories of our family or our own stories, our history, but they may also overlap with some of the perspectives seen in fiction.
Creative Writing and Memoir Class February 17, 2021 Carol Brennan King
Although the majority of the text looks like what you expect, periodically the writer shifts into a different layout to show how a character, usually the protagonist, sees the scene.
