Creating Vibrant Characters

Description

Great literature is always about the main players. Charismatic protagonists stay with readers long after finishing a text. Yet most aspiring writers wonder: how do our imagined people morph into “real” ones? Why is it that my characters feel so flat, passive, and obvious on the page?

“Holden Caulfield is someone I know,” says instructor Josh Mohr. “His story has life in it because of our bond, our relationship.”

This class will focus on defining every tool of characterization in a writer’s literary toolbox. Through discussion, readings, and in-class exercises, the onus will be on how to use physical action and dialogue to render vibrant beings. “Readers want to observe a book’s characters in the wild,” Josh says. “Don’t explain away the fun of watching them act. If a writer constructs compelling scenes, the main players pop off the page.”

Note: This class is helpful not only for fiction writers but also for writers in other genres, ie. memoir, personal essays, or narrative poetry.

Joshua Mohr is the author of the novels Termite Parade, which was an Editors’ Choice on The New York Times Best Seller List, and Some Things that Meant the World to Me, one of O Magazine’s Top 10 reads of 2009. He has an MFA from the University of San Francisco and has published numerous short stories and essays in publications such as The New York Times Book Review, 7—7, the Bay Guardian, ZYZZYVA, The Rumpus, and The Nervous Breakdown, among many others. His third novel, Damascus,� came out in October 2011. http://www.joshuamohr.net

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http://www.writingsalons.com

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415.609.2468

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