The Craft of Writing
3 sessions, 3 teachers
Friday afternoons from 2:00 to 4:00PM
All genres and writers of all levels are welcome!
January 30 Ellen Bryson – Seeing Your Work Clearly
February 6 Janet Sleslien Charles – Setting the Tone
February 13 Noah Weisz – Writing Children’s and Young Adult Fiction
Seeing Your Work Clearly — Too often, what you see in your head, or what you think is on the page is not obvious to your reader. Move your work to a higher level by understanding how confusion happens. We will work with a few of your pages, looking at them carefully to see how to improve them through cutting the unneeded, lifting up your verbs, and seeing where not enough (or too much) is on the page.
Setting the Tone — As writers, establishing tone is a subtle but important way in which we move plot forward and raise the stakes for our characters - and for readers. This practical workshop will explore how we can use tone to strengthen our scenes. We will explore fiction and nonfiction excerpts to learn how authors have created the unique tones for their stories and characters, then try our hand at finding the pitch perfect tone for our own work.
Writing Children’s and Young Adult Fiction -- What, if anything, makes a story for young readers different from a story for grown-ups? We'll dive into this tricky question with a broad yet practical approach, exploring concrete technical elements of writer’s craft as well as larger questions about education, ethics, and responsibility. By the time the workshop is over, you’ll have written the beginning of your own story for young readers—and you’ll have acquired tools to keep going on your own.
About the Instructors
1. Ellen Bryson, author of The Transformation of Bartholomew Fortuno ellenbryson.com
2. Janet Skeslien Charles, author of The Paris Library and in 2024 The Librarians of Rue de Picardie JSkeslienCharles.com
3. Noah Weisz, past winner of the F(r)iction Short Story Contest, the Katherine Paterson Prize, the Patty Friedmann Writing Competition, and the Sydney Taylor Manuscript Award. His short stories for children, teens, and adults have been widely published.
If space is available, you can take a single class for 50 euros.
Email creativewriting@wice-paris.org to register for a single class.
