(Winter23) One Day Writing Workshop: ​Crafting Compelling Characters with Dawnie Walton

One Day Writing Workshop: ​Crafting Compelling Characters with Dawnie Walton
Date: Wednesday, April 5th
Time: 6:00PM-9:00PM ET
Fee: $100
 
Making up people can be a tricky business. Write them too wild and they become unbelievable; hew them too close to real human behavior and speech patterns and they’re in danger of coming off boring. So what’s the proper balance to strike, to both convince and surprise? How do writers build characters their readers will root for (or sometimes against)? What are round and flat characters, and how can each be useful to your storytelling? And what exactly is meant by an adage you’ve probably heard a time or two, “Plot is character”? In this class, we’ll do close readings from contemporary literature featuring fictional people who leap off the page (or at least make a strong impression from the start). We’ll study four core methods writers use to develop three-dimensional characters, and devote time to exercises and discussion to help you interrogate your own.

Dawnie Walton is the author of The Final Revival of Opal & Nev, winner of the 2022 Aspen Words Literary Prize, the Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award, the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award, and the Audie Award for Fiction. Her debut novel was also longlisted for the 2022 Women’s Prize for Fiction, and was named one of the best books of 2021 by The Washington Post, NPR, Esquire, and former U.S. President Barack Obama. She is the cofounder and editorial director of Ursa, an audio production company celebrating short fiction from underrepresented voices, and is the cohost of its accompanying podcast. Formerly an editor at Essence and Entertainment Weekly, she has received fellowships from MacDowell and Tin House, and an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop (where she has taught a fiction seminar). Born and raised in Jacksonville, Florida, she lives in Brooklyn with her husband. ​