Study the Craft and Art of Writing and Find Your Voice This Fall

The Westport Writers’ Workshop, based in Westport, CT, and in operation since 2003, offers workshops, lectures, and editing and coaching services for emerging to established writers in a wide variety of genres.

We’re all writers in one way or another, but there comes a time when writers decide they want more—inspiration, discipline, knowledge, community, support, structure and skill. Westport Writers’ Workshop, now on Zoom, offers all of these elements and more.

If you’re relatively new to writing or are looking to return in a more dedicated way, consider:

Introduction to Creative Writing: Beginner to Intermediate
Instructor: Adele Annesi
This interactive workshop explores the key creative concepts of poetry, personal narrative, creative nonfiction, drama and playwriting, short fiction and longer fiction to inspire writers to develop their individual voice, style, interests and focus. We also study the art of critique and revision, and each week writers can bring pages of their work to share. The workshop includes handouts, prompts and personalized critiques from the instructor. Participants can work on existing projects and/or create new pieces to cultivate and develop the writer within. This seven-session workshop meets Mondays, from 10 a.m. to 12 noon, from August 31 through October 26. The cost is $375, and the workshop is limited to seven students.

For more information or for registration, visit Introduction to Creative Writing: Beginner to Intermediate.

If you’re further along in your writing and your focus is fiction, consider:

Advanced Fiction Writing Plus Manuscript
Instructor: Adele Annesi
This advanced workshop aims to inspire writers to create their best short and long-form fiction through instruction, analysis, critique and practice. We explore all craft elements in depth, from audience, backstory and structure to theme, tone and voice. Our critique and revision methods emphasize thorough analysis of each writer’s work to discover which elements achieve the writer’s purpose or not and why. Writers also share their goals and aspirations, with personalized input from the instructor. The workshop is suitable for writers of literary and genre fiction for publication and personal exploration.

A completed manuscript is not required, but writers new to the workshop must submit a 250-word writing sample in advance for entrance. Besides presenting five pages of writing weekly aloud for discussion, each writer also sends the group one submission of 15 pages of new or revised work once during the season. The group will read the work in advance, write constructive comments on the pages and provide feedback in workshop. This seven-session workshop meets Mondays, from 1:30 p.m. to 4 p.m., from September 14 through November 2. The cost is $535, and the workshop is limited to seven students.

For more information or to register for this workshop, visit Advanced Fiction Writing Plus Manuscript.

If neither of these workshops meets your needs, Westport Writers’ Workshop offers over 75 workshops in the morning, afternoon and evening, as well as on Saturday. Westport also offers lectures and short-term writing intensives throughout the year in a supportive community atmosphere.

For more information, visit Westport Writers’ Workshop. You can also email Westport at info@WestportWriters.org or call 203.227.3250.

The Paradox of Voice, Plot and Prose in Fiction

Writers may have a unique voice, an imaginative storyline and distinctive prose and still find that the sum of the parts doesn’t equal a cohesive whole. Why? One reason is the writing.

The writer who aims to present a well-developed voice and story is a writer who aims high. Aiming high is good. The paradox is that unless the prose, the actual writing, effectively conveys these and all the other elements needed for quality fiction, the individual elements won’t matter much.

So how does a writer skillfully create prose robust enough to convey all the elements of craft? By starting with a right perspective and a critical eye.

Perspective in art is the ability to draw something on a two-dimensional surface in a way that accurately depicts the object’s proportions and position. To achieve perspective, the artist must step back and ask questions of the work. Does it look like the intended object? Does it occupy the proper space in the overall drawing? Does it tell the viewer something more than just the object's identity? In short, the artist—and the writer—must view a work with a critical eye.

The last thing we may want in life these days is criticism. But this isn’t criticism in the pejorative sense. It’s critique in the analytical sense. And it’s a skill that finds its most effective use after a first or an early draft. In a first draft, the writer is still telling himself what he thinks is the story. In later drafts, the writer is discovering the story. And attentive writing—intentional writing—actually helps this process.

The additional paradox is that it's usually when writers create beauty, lovely writing, that they most often have trouble figuring out how to sculpt the prose—the actual writing. But lovely can easily get in the way of clarity and character development, and that can’t be allowed.

So what steps can a writer take to avoid this trap? Here is a list of steps writers can use to strengthen their prose:

• First, put the first or early draft aside for at least a week, and work on other things.
• When you return to the work, enter a mindset that is aware of and expects the need for changes.
• Read a small section of the work, just the first paragraph, and look for ways to tinker.
• Remove every unnecessary word.
• Remove all unclear words and phrases, and replace them all with precise words. Use a thesaurus or Word's synonym feature.
• Restructure what’s left for the greatest impact.
• Reorder paragraphs for the order in which events happen.

The key to this process is to take each step individually. This means going through a paragraph or section once per step. This will enable you to see the "before and after" of a sentence, paragraph, scene or section. Then the better you get at editing, the more steps you can combine at the same time. For particularly natty sections or chapters, revert to the one-step-per-read approach.

For added help, trying printing the section and reading the hardcopy, preferably somewhere you don't usually read it. Or imagine having to present the work to someone else for review. You might select a beta reader to do just that. Additionally, you can read the work aloud, for example, over Zoom, to a trusted audience of one—yourself. You can even record the reading and play it back.

Admittedly, this is a process that requires determination. But remember the caveat of Noah Lukeman in the classic The First Five Pages: The art of writing can’t be taught, but the craft of writing can.