Creative Writing for Storytellers
5 sessions 2 hours each
Schedule: Daily 10am - 7pm
Course Fee: 9,000 Baht
Instructor: Joey Hizon
This short course focuses on the essential elements of good storytelling, and uses a highly interactive and collaborative approach to learning. By the end of the course, participants will develop the skills they need to complete their own works of fiction in whatever form they desire – be it a short story, novel, graphic novel or screenplay. The skills acquired are even transferable to many forms of non-fiction such as essays and blogs.
Session 1: Getting Started
Literary & Genre Fiction
The story as a collection of ideas
Seed Ideas and how to generate them
Exercise 1: Genre Round Robin
Exercise 2: The Box Method
Exercise 3 (time permitting): Forced Inspiration
Session 2: Character
Desire: what does the character want more than anything?
Human Complexity - Contrast & Consistency - the basis of the character’s personality
How the character changes as the story unfolds
4 types of characters, 4 ways to show character traits
Exercise : Hot Seating
Character Questionnaires
Session 3: Plot
The Major Dramatic Question
Conflict
Plot Structure – 3 things you need at the beginning, how the middle builds on the dramatic question; ending the story with crisis, climax and consequences
Exercise: 10 Beat Narrative
Session 4: Point of View
Point of View – the storyteller’s contract with the reader
First Person: Single Vision, First Person: Multiple Vision, First Person: Peripheral & the Unreliable First Person
Third Person:Single Vision, Third Person:Multiple Vision, Third Person:Omniscient, Third Person: Objective
Second Person
Exercise: The lovers’ triangle
Session 5: Dialogue
Summary & Scene : 2 ways to reveal any moment in a story, and when to use each one
Keeping It Real – Congruence in dialogue
How to Listen: Training for writing dialogue
Dialogue Conventions
Mixing narrative & dialogue
Indirect Dialogue
Subtext
Dialect
Exercises : Improv