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SUMMARY:REPLAY | Beyond Description: Creating Powerful\, Realistic Characters in Fiction and Memoir
DESCRIPTION:The most powerful characters on the page are complex and multi-layered\, and they both surprise and convince readers with (and within!) their reality.\n\n\n\nREPLAY INCLUDES: VIDEO\, SLIDES\, CHAT\, PROMPTS\, HANDOUT\, AND TRANSCRIPT \n\n\n\nFor Fiction and Memoir \n\n\n\nNovelists create characters from nothing\, who must feel as real as anyone we’ve met. Memoirists must pack a lifetime of knowledge into selected details to show readers the people they engaged with\, as those people truly are. But too often\, writers default to physical description—characters pausing in front of conveniently reflective surfaces—or narrating our own judgements of the people we know\, rather than allowing readers to make those discoveries themselves. As an actor\, playwright\, and director\, Allison K Williams has explored character creation inside and out. \n\n\n\nIn this special 2-hour webinar\, you’ll learn how to use tools from theatre to analyze your own text and create stronger characters on the page. With examples from fiction and memoir\, we’ll examine how objectives\, passions\, and foibles drive characters and deepen their dramatic impact; how qualities of movement are expressed in verbs and adverbs; the difference between high-context dialogue and “stuff I needed the reader to know so I made a character say it”; and even dive into how punctuation can shape a character’s emotion in a scene. \n\n\n\nYou’ll raise your craft level and gain a tool kit to help you present all your characters\, real or fictional\, as fully rounded beings\, regardless of their word count\, and make each one memorable and worthy of their time on the page.  \n\n\n\nIn-class writing time and live editing will give you a chance to apply this to your writing right away. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nThis is a TWO-HOUR class\, with 20 minutes of writing time in the middle.\n\n\n\n\n45 minutes – Learn the tools of character analysis\, and key writing techniques to show character on the page\n\n\n\n10 minutes – Q&A to fully understand and apply the information.\n\n\n\n20 minutes – Revise a scene that introduces one of your key characters to heighten the character’s impact on the page and more skillfully show who they are\, what they want and why they matter. Allison will continue taking questions in the chat. \n\n\n\nOPTIONAL: volunteer for live-editing and upload your scene as a Word doc or docx to a Google Drive (link will be provided in class\, no pages will be accepted before they are called for).\n\n\n\n40 minutes – Allison will live-edit pages shared on screen\, noting where the writer is succeeding and what revisions could make the prose even more effective. During live edits\, she’ll call out specific techniques and tips for everyone to apply to their own work\, right away. \n\n\n\n10 minutes – Q&A and planning your writing from here.\n\n\n\n\nThis webinar will cover\n\n\n\n\nHOW the interplay of passion and foible creates conflict and tension within and between characters\n\n\n\nThe “CHARACTER ZERO” of Commedia Dell’ Arte and how it relates to modern prose\n\n\n\nSHOWING villainous\, abusive\, narcissistic and harmful behavior in ways that allow the reader to judge—and why moments of “good” give evil more impact\n\n\n\nWORLDBUILDING through character action and dialogue\n\n\n\nWHEN\, HOW\, and WHY to use adverbs (hint: “in a _____ tone” is needlessly verbose! Bring on the adverbs!)\n\n\n\nThe ACTOR’S TECHNIQUE for bringing to life the most minor of characters—and how to use it in writing.\n\n\n\nOBJECTIVES and OBSTACLES\, and how they make characters active in every scene.\n\n\n\n\nThis webinar is ideal for\n\n\n\n\nNovelists with a large cast of characters who need distinction; or only a few characters who must hold the reader’s attention throughout the book\n\n\n\nMemoirists who want to write vivid characters without getting lost in their own emotional past experience\n\n\n\nCreative writing students and graduates of MFA programs who want to expand their writing craft with conscious practice.\n\n\n\nDevelopmental editors who want to grow their knowledge of characterization in prose and better communicate that knowledge to their author clients.\n\n\n\n“Plotters” struggling with bringing a character dossier to life on the page \n\n\n\n“Pantsers” who need to fill in background and personality without info-dumping\n\n\n\nWriters hearing feedback that their characters blend together\, or are too “black-and-white” and need more depth\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nThe live event happened in October 2025. \n\n\n\nABOUT YOUR PRESENTER\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nAllison K Williams is the author of Seven Drafts: Self-Edit Like a Pro From Blank Page to Book. She has edited and coached writers to Big Five and literary/university publishing deals and the New York Times and USA Today bestsellers lists. She’s guided essayists and humorists to publication in media including the New Yorker\, Time\, the Guardian\, the New York Times\, McSweeney’s\, Refinery29\, Hippocampus\, the Belladonna and TED Talks. As Social Media Editor for Brevity\, she inspires thousands of writers with weekly blogs on craft and the writing life. \n\n\n\nBefore turning to writing and editing fulltime\, Allison was a classically-trained actor. With a BA in Theatre and an MFA in Playwriting\, she has acted and directed with American Stage\, The Kentucky Shakespeare Festival\, Eckerd College\, Western Michigan University\, and many more. Her plays for young actors have been noted by Dramatics Magazine as top-ten most produced worldwide\, and her multi-character solo show TRUE STORY won Best of Fringe at the London Fringe Festival and toured the USA and Canada. \n\n\n\nQuestions? Please email Info@writingcraft.com \n\n\n\nBecause the replay is delivered instantly upon purchase\, all sales are final. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nRegistration Info\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nEvent Organizer\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nLocation
URL:https://writingcraft.com/event/beyond-description/
LOCATION:Zoom
CATEGORIES:Webinars
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DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20260723T150000
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SUMMARY:WEBINAR | The Art of the Cinematic Close-Up: Crafting Details that Immerse Readers in Your Story
DESCRIPTION:Learn to use your writerly “lens” to focus on the solitary details that open a narrative universe of fluid\, truthful\, and seamless prose.\n\n\n\nFor Creative Nonfiction and Fiction WritersIncluded in the Season Pass \n\n\n\nWriters of fiction and nonfiction alike understand: we can’t use ostentatious or flowery language\, nor vague or abstract moments\, if we want to truly grab our readers and immerse them in the world of our story. Learn how to focus your scenes with concrete details\, vivid imagery\, original language\, and apt metaphor that is scaled to the task at hand. \n\n\n\nIn this webinar\, we’ll use the metaphor of photography and cinema to focus our writing lenses on the art of the close-up—the particular\, singular\, and sustained. Looking at writers from Cheryl Strayed to Virginia Woolf\, J.R.R. Tolkien to Zadie Smith\, we’ll examine how to describe physical things and people\, places\, as well as discreet moments in time\, states of high emotion\, and interiority with rigor and specificity. From “close-ups” like a dying moth on a windowsill; the way a drunken father stumbles around the house; the moment you tossed your second hiking boot off the mountaintop; a feeling of foreboding partway through a quest; you’ll discover how to use language beautifully and truthfully to create what John Gardner called a “vivid and continuous” dream in the reader’s imagination.   \n\n\n\nYou’ll leave having written some new passages that you can use in any writing project. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nIn this webinar\, you will:\n\n\n\n\nEXPLORE the craft of sustained\, vivid description\n\n\n\nDISCOVER how to manipulate your writerly lens of focus with intention\n\n\n\nLEARN the difference between the particular and specific vs. the vague and abstract\n\n\n\nPRACTICE writing new passages using close-up techniques you can immediately apply to your own work\n\n\n\n\nThis webinar is ideal for writers who:\n\n\n\n\nfeel their work is flat or lacking depth\, focus or specificity\n\n\n\nare finding their writing voice\n\n\n\nstruggle with writing description\n\n\n\nwant to move beyond generic imagery and find the singular\, unexpected detail that brings a scene to life\n\n\n\n\nClosed captioning is available. ✔All registrants receive the recording. ✔ \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nABOUT YOUR PRESENTER\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nA sharp\, funny presenter\, Ethan Gilsdorf is a writer\, teacher\, performer\, and a huge nerd. The author of the award-winning memoir Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks\, his work appears in the New York Times\, Washington Post\, Esquire\, Wired\, Salon\, O the Oprah Magazine\, Huffington Post\, Brevity\, Electric Literature\, Poetry\, and The Southern Review\, among other publications\, and has been named “Notable” by The Best American Essays.  \n\n\n\nEthan teaches workshops in essay\, creative nonfiction\, and memoir at GrubStreet in Boston\, where he leads the Essay Incubator program\, and at LitArts RI. He is also on the faculty of the Solstice MFA Program at Lasell University. At Hampshire College\, he studied filmmaking and creative writing and received an MFA in Creative Writing (Poetry) from Louisiana State University. He presented the TEDx talk “Why Dungeons & Dragons is Good for You (In Real Life)” and offers workshops teaching adults\, children\, and organizations how to play Dungeons & Dragons. \n\n\n\nREFUNDS (less a $10 processing fee) ARE AVAILABLE before the replay is sent out. For a refund\, EMAIL us at info@WritingCraft.com. Canceling your Zoom invite will not initiate this process.  \n\n\n\nThere are no refunds after the replay is sent.Questions? Please email Info@writingcraft.com \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nRegistration Info\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nEvent Organizer\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nLocation
URL:https://writingcraft.com/event/art-of-the-cinematic/
LOCATION:Zoom
CATEGORIES:Webinars
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