Writers as young as 6 years old gathered at Featherstone Center for the Arts over the weekend to attend The MV Times’ first midwinter Islanders Write. Over the course of two days, 15 workshops focused on the art, craft, fun, folly, and business of writing. Here is a glimpse of some of the lessons that writers young and old were learning.
Saturday
Wake Up and Write! Judith Hannan
Fifteen Island writers woke up bright and early to start their Saturday with author Judith Hannan and her workshop “Wake Up and Write!” which featured prompts about a miracle, a memory from age 14, and an object of past significance. Writers were challenged to step into another world — one of their own making, their memory, their physical life.
Hannan said the act of writing isn’t always about what you want to put down on a page. Sometimes it reveals unknown parts of you, or your characters, along the way. She referenced this quote by James Baldwin that motivates her own work: “When you’re writing, you’re trying to find out something which you don’t know. The whole language of writing for me is finding out what you don’t want to know, what you don’t want to find out. But something forces you to anyway.”
Writing Dialogue John Hough, Jr.
“So, the, like, weather we’re having — wow!”
That’s a sentence John Hough, Jr., would hate to see coming.
“Anyone, in any situation, can say ‘Wow!’” he exclaimed, as he threw his hands in the air. Starting a sentence with “So,” is another off-limits tool, and don’t get him started on “Like.”
Rigidity was not Hough’s goal with his workshop about writing dialogue — experimentation and self-expression were his main points. But avoiding generics is his rule of thumb. Clichés when we speak look different on a page, and keeping a reader engaged means maintaining tension, surprise, and a wonderment about what’s next, according to Hough, who is a novelist and the author of “A Fiction Writer’s Guide to Dialogue.”
“We begin by understanding that dialogue in fiction is nothing like dialogue in real life … [And] characters reveal who they are by what they do,” Hough said. The key to dialogue, he said, is asking the question: “What does this reveal about my character?”
Creating Characters Who Belong Where You Put Them Nicole Galland
For author Nicole Galland, character development is at the core of an impactful story. And characters, just like people in real life, are more than they think they are — they’re also a product of their environment.
How is a character shaped by the time and place in which the story is set? For a character to come across holistically on the page, his or her personal history should be fleshed out, investigated, and treated with care, according to Galland, whose latest novel, “Boy,” is set in Elizabethan London.
Making sure the reader understands aspects of the character that may be hidden, pushed down, or expressed accidentally is what Galland was trying to get across. Writing characters in their own complicated context is a practice in reflection on time and place.
Writing From the Heart Nancy Slonim Aronie
“You are not writing for anyone but you,” author Nancy Slonim Aronie said to the attendees of her workshop. “The most important part of your memoir is your vulnerability.”
In order to write about your own life, Aronie said you have to feel through the pain of it first. “The body keeps the score,” she explained, and while writing can be a significant tool for healing, feeling through memories is an important step in the creative process.
Participants in the workshop were led through a scene-writing exercise: What was dinner at their house like?
For some, it was a silence, a waiting, and for others — loud, greasy, and angry. For all, it was formative. All the dinner scenes were a practice in empathy, observance, and a watching eye turned in, then out onto the page. Dinner was a way of seeing one another, and a confrontation of what we all hide within us and need to let out. For Aronie, and many participants in the workshop, that’s where writing becomes a lifelong tool for expression.
Let Music Inspire Your Writing Marcia De Castro Borges
There are many ways music and writing can go hand in hand: a favorite song in the background while working on a novel, a poem inspired by a melody, or a guide to a different era in history.
Brazilian American author and educator Marcia De Castro Borges used the music of Bob Dylan and Gilberto Gil to illustrate the influence of music in her own life. Both musicians wrote songs about changing times, but each was deeply influenced by their own context in history. Dylan in America in the 1960s amplified the voice of a counterculture, and Gil in Brazil during the same time period was under the threat of a Brazilian military regime.
“I use music to inspire me,” Borges said. The participants in her workshop felt the same way. With rhythm, cadence, and ingenuity, some songs can inspire an author to turn the next page in their project.
Sunday
Can a Frog Bark? Grades 1-3
In a large classroom on Sunday morning, story construction through imagination had no age limit. Children’s book author Kate Feiffer, who is also the director of Islanders Write, led a workshop for first through third graders. Isla Katz, 6½, and Luke Thomson, 9½, came up with the idea of a fictional foxhound named Remy during the season “spring-and-a-half.”
Their story unfolded with dialogue, action, and all the basic elements that make up so many tales of the world. “Remy the dog” had thoughts, feelings, and in a sudden turn of events, got to see an extinct heath hen that jumped out of the grass. In the end, the extinct bird was a friendly spirit, Remy had made a new best friend, and a full blood moon shone across the scene, illuminating each character.
“This is fun,” Isla whispered while drawing a heath hen in the grass on her paper. “When’s the next writing class?” asked Luke.
Let’s Make Stuff Up Grades 4-6
Everyone has different experiences that inform their stories. With the same subject, not one person would write the same thing on the paper in front of them. For the elementary and middle schoolers in author Nancy Star’s writing workshop, this element of story building was center-stage.
Students chose various prompts based on their name origins, favorite colors, or their messy room. They were taught to doodle “scribble monsters” if they got stuck, and were having trouble coming up with ideas. They experimented with writing to different people — their best friend or worst enemy were popular choices. Star said knowing your audience is a crucial part of the writing process.
“I really want you to think about the scene you’re writing about as if you’re there right now — turn your head to the right [in your scene], and write what you see,” Star said.
The group asked clarifying questions along the way, but were mostly quietly involved in the process, focused on the sentences as they flowed from their own ideas and expanded as they wrote.
Journaling Grades 9-12
James W. Jennings, author of the new novel “Wings of Red,” journals every day, and he hopes the younger generation will try their hand at it, too.
“Your process of discovery could be different, but I promise if you journal consistently, you’ll find your voice, no problem,” Jennings told the group of high school students, along with some college students who attended during their spring break.
Jennings explained the many forms writing comes in — text messages, thoughts, notes during class; everyone is the author of their own life. Journaling is a way of viewing those snippets through a cohesive lens. And that mode of reflection, he said, is a superpower.
“It’s all a process. A lot of people abandon their original voice — learn, be humble, but never lose track of your superpower,” Jennings said.
