Ridgefield Writers Conference a Success, Thanks to All

Ridgefield's historic fountain

Thanks to great coordinators, a wonderful workshop faculty and keynote speaker, industry-leading panelists and dedicated attendees, the inaugural Ridgefield Writers Conference on September 28 in historic Ridgefield, Connecticut, was a resounding success, with plans under consideration for a 2014 conference.

The Ridgefield Writers Conference, based on the Master of Fine Arts workshop format, surpassed its attendee goal, with participants coming from as far as North Carolina and northern New England. Due to the positive response to the event, a fiction and creative nonfiction workshop was added, as well as two literary agents to the morning and afternoon media and publishing panels.

The conference was kicked off by keynote speaker and award-winning author Dr. Michael White, founder and director of the low-residency MFA program in creative writing at Fairfield University. The workshops featured fiction with acclaimed author Chris Belden, winner of Fairfield University’s 2013 book award, nonfiction with author and novelist Pete Nelson, whose novel I Thought You Were Dead has been optioned for film, creative nonfiction with award-winning novelist Rachel Basch, young adult fiction with multi-published author Steve Otfinoski and poetry with poetry professor and former Crazyhorse editor-in-chief Carol Ann Davis.

The media and publishing panels featured editors from The Newtowner, Alimentum and Connecticut Muse. Electronic and print publishers included BookTV Girl, Defying Gravity and Globe Pequot Press, and agents included Allen O’Shea, L. Perkins, Rita Rosenkranz and Talcott Notch.

he conference concluded with a wine and cheese reception sponsored by the Ridgefield Library for An Evening With the Authors, featuring Linda Merlino, Chris Belden, Nalini Jones and Pete Nelson. Books on the Common provided a venue for faculty-penned works on-site, and the Chamber of Commerce provided information on local venues.

For more information on the Ridgefield Writers Conference, created by Word for Words, LLC, with Ridgefield-based author Chris Belden and award-winning writer, editor and instructor Adele Annesi, please contact Adele Annesi at Word for Words, LLC, a.annesi@sbcglobal.net.

Mining Family History for Fiction and Creative Nonfiction

Mine your history for stories

Everyone has family of one sort or another, and most people can mine their family history for stories. But developing a story for fiction is different than you may think.

Going through personal or family history for story ideas doesn't have to mean an arduous search of archives. To select a unique idea worth developing, ask yourself these questions:

• What person in my family (including me) do I find most interesting, and why?
• What turning point occurred in this person's life that forever changed it?
• What pivotal incident led to the event — the one without which the turning point wouldn't have happened?
• What was the main outcome of the event?
• What was the most important consequence of the event, especially for that individual?

To fictionalize this story and elevate it to a more literary level, ask yourself these questions:

• What if the person was of a different race, ethnic background and/or gender?
• What if the turning point occurred at an earlier or a later stage of the person's life?
• What if the pivotal incident occurred in a different setting, or was a different incident altogether?
• What if the main the main outcome of the event was the opposite or vastly different from what happened?

 Making these changes will change the story and its ending, enabling it to become uniquely yours. The key to this approach is having some affinity for and/or experience in how you answer the questions. For example, if you change the setting, do you have some knowledge of the new locale? Truth is, after all, still stranger than fiction.

Tip: To add spice to your story, consider this adage from John Updike. There's the story you're afraid to tell others and the story you're afraid to tell yourself. That's the one to write. What aspect of your story are you afraid to tell?

Happy writing!

Use the Principles of Journalism to Create Creative Nonfiction — and Fiction

Nonfiction techniques in fiction

Anyone who has studied journalism will recall that a good lead must include the five Ws and an H: who, what, where, when, why and how. One of my editors adds the caveat of a 35-word maximum. This approach to writing a first paragraph — and to creating or recreating an entire story — works for fiction forms, too. Before we study each letter in its turn, let's start with the lead.

Exercise: This lesson is best learned by doing, so start by selecting a nonfiction story you've written — one you especially like and have written recently — and edit the lead to conform to the journalistic style. If you're looking for ideas for new stories, scan your local newspaper (print sometimes works better), select a story that grabs you and follow the same steps.

Using the journalistic style to craft a first paragraph offers several benefits. It's an artistic approach to starting a work of creative nonfiction or fiction because it presents your entire work in microcosm. It also gives an editor reading your submission a sense of where the work is going, and what you may be able to do with it.

For examples of successful submissions using this technique, see Marco Polo Quarterly and Midway Journal.

Happy writing!

The Descendants: A Lesson in Cross-Genre Writing

Harmonic blending of genres

If you're looking for a great visual lesson on how to blend genres — particularly creative nonfiction and memoir — see The Descendants, a film based on the debut novel of the same name by Kaui Hart Hemmings and directed by Alexander Payne, starring George Clooney. Hemmings' Hawaiian upbringing and experience, along with her Sarah Lawrence education, underpin the story. The work blends several plotlines — the apparently unraveling personal life of main character Matt King, played by Clooney, and the impending sale of a vast chunk of legacy land owned by King's extensive haole family. What's particularly instructive about the movie is the seamless blending of the storylines, which presents a good approach to cross-genre work — assigning one plot line per genre.

If you see the film, let me know what you think.

Happy writing! 

A Tale of Two Stories: What Is Your Piece Is Really About?

One of the many maxims we learn in journalism is to not just report a story, but to get at what the story is really about. The difference between the two perspectives is the difference between a cloud and solid ground. The principle applies to all nonfiction (see The Art of Nonfiction: A Guide for Writers and Readers), and to fiction as well.

Also see the Online Workshop

To finish a first draft, you're basically looking to include, organize and establish the main points of a story, the key facts. As you go through the process, a more well-defined image appears. Imagine an old darkroom, where the photographer (the good ones anyway) would immerse photographic paper in developing solution and watch the image appear. In looking closely, you not only see the main subject, but the details you hadn't noticed before.

That's when you start getting at what a story is really about (see "Find Focus by Asking What the Story is Really About"). It's also when questions arise that you must follow to their logical conclusion. Ask yourself, what does what I've discovered really say about this person or character, event or plot point? 

I just had this conversation with a biographer (see How To Do Biography) as we discussed his subject. In getting at the real person he's writing about, he has to decide which details to include and which to leave out, how to organize what he has and how much of himself to inject into the piece. With the blurring of the lines among genres, this question is increasingly common. I told him he could decide based on how he answers these questions:

• Does the fact reveal something about the subject?
• Does it enrich the story?
• Does it compel the reader to read on?

When deciding whether to include information, you should answer yes to all three of these questions, not just one or two.

The same principle applies to fiction. As you write and revise your work, ask yourself, what does what I've just written or the idea I've just had say about this character? Is the answer different from what I thought the person was like? If so, how so? How does this impact the other characters, and the plot? Writers often fear these questions because they fear the answers will lead them afield. But keep in mind, if you don’t answer these questions now, you'll answer them later, and that can mean lots of extra time spent running headlong to a dead end.

As you go through the vetting process, note the new reality that emerges. This is what your story is about. It may not be what you started with, but it should be richer — and more original — than where you began.

For more information on the blurring of the line between genres, see "Poets & Writers'" "An Interview With Creative Nonfiction Writer Hank Stuever."