The Muse & the Marketplace 2017

Join author Brunonia Barry for an illuminating and potentially entertaining session as she advises session-goers how to slip into the skins of their fictional characters in order to best write their worlds. The session includes a character questionnaire and an interactive meet and greet with writers "becoming" the characters they've created, and learning more about them than they previously imagined.

What do we want from a novel in the 21st Century? What forms, beyond a sequence of paragraphs in a sequence of chapters, can a novel contain and with what purpose? In this session, we will discuss these questions and look at excerpts from novels that experiment with form in surprising and meaningful ways. We will also discuss the work of writers attending the session and how experiments with form can deepen or potentially distract from the fictional world an author is creating.

The challenge of a big, sprawling, multiple point of view novel is one that most writers find irresistible – but one whose risk-to-benefit ratio may be hazardous. With each POV shift, the writer runs the risk of interrupting John Gardner’s “fictional dream”; with each new story line introduced by new narrators, the writer risks dissipating tension. And a multiplicity of points of view can lead to a flatness of characterization for non-POV characters.

In this session, I will argue that a single POV – or a drastic reduction in the number of narrators – may actually present the greater challenge to the novelist, while also providing greater rewards. Using examples and exercises, we’ll discuss techniques to bring all of your characters to life through the eyes of a single narrator, using subtext and narrative unreliability to allow the reader to see what your narrator can’t see. We’ll also do an exercise designed to help you decide whether or not you have too many narrators – and which of them should be eliminated.

When writing is described as “voice driven,” what does that really mean? In this seminar, we’ll figure all that out. We’ll look at different types of writing—fiction, nonfiction, poetry, blogs, tweets—to examine what “voice” is, how it’s constructed, and finally (time permitting), we’ll experiment with ways to amplify your voice as a force of good in your own writing.

How does setting shape our fiction, especially when we are writing about countries and places not frequently represented in English-language fiction? Location is not just a backdrop - it often dictates the choices our characters make. In this session, we will examine the importance of setting and how a specific place can drive our narrative. We will learn how to energize our writing with sensory details without leaning into stereotypes of the “foreign” or “ethnic” or even the “familiar” setting. Through close reading of scenes where setting powers memory and action, we will learn how to use a specific geographical space to best have our character’s voices, choices, and stories play out.