Learning Events presents
Darnell Arnoult's Extended Novel Course
A Novel Process: Six Weekends to a First Draft
Okay, that title is a little misleading! Learning Events, in conjunction with novelist, poet, and long-time writing coach and instructor Darnell Arnoult, has put together an 18-month course based on the Arnoult Method and her Sublime Fiction Triangle. The course is made up of six two day weekend workshops spread out over 18 months. Each workshop will focus on key steps from character development to scene construction to divining a plot, a structure, and identifying themes organically present in the characters' experience. Each workshop will be hands on. Participants will receive method materials, instruction, and will also be asked to write and read and perform creative and evaluative assignments regarding their work and the writing process. Each weekend, participants will be sent home with assignments and resources to use between workshops to take the manuscript from inception to a finished draft. The instructor will be available for encouragement and questions in the interim. Manuscript critique will be confined to discussion of process and discovery on the part of the writer and the limited laboratory and workshop readings during the six weekends. The instructor will not read manuscripts as part of the course. The goal is for participants to have a completed "learning draft" or first draft by the end of 18 months, or be well on the way to such a draft. However, reaching this goal will be dependent on the students' attendance at the workshops coupled with their follow through in the intervening weeks! Students will not be allowed to come into the course series after the first weekend, so we ask that those participants who wish to give this method a go make an informal but genuine commitment to the course for the long haul for their benefit and that of the other participants. The course is limited to 14 participants. It's like signing on for a cruise around the Cape of Good Hope. You won't reach home if you get off early!
Darnell Arnoult is the author of the award-winning poetry collection What Travels With Us, published by LSU Press, and Sufficient Grace, a novel published in hardcover and paperback by Free Press, an imprint of Simon & Schuster. Sufficient Grace is also available in unabridged audio from Recorded Books. Her short works have appeared in a variety of literary journals. She has been teaching writing for over 18 years at workshops and conferences including the Duke Writers Workshop and Duke Short Course Program. She teaches workshops and coaches students from all over the Southeast. Many students have written novel drafts based on her process, and some have gone on to attend the prestigious Sewanee Writers Workshop, been accepted to MFA programs, and began careers as published writers.
Each workshop listed below will be conducted with the three legs of the Sublime Fiction Triangle in mind: character, action, language.
Weekend #1: WHO ARE YOUR PEOPLE? This weekend we use photographs and questions as well as some short assignments to develop characters and get at their experience. Participants learn how to build a character from scratch or take a real person across the bridge to fictional character. Participants come to a better understanding of the artist's need to collect and to contain for later use, how to manipulate real events to shape art, how to give away pieces of experience and observation to generate a new world, and the use of "quick writes" to find the path to a larger story. We also cover the concept of writing toward a novel or story under the rubric of a "learning draft" and the role research plays in this process.
Weekend #2: WHERE THE HECK ARE WE? This weekend is a level two character development workshop, with the focus on characters and place, characters and community, and what impact place has on character and story. As we come to further understand our characters and discover new ones, we also define the space the character moves out from and the environment of the possible story. We examine the roll of dialogue and setting as a means to create an illusion of existence-verisimilitude.
Weekend #3: WARNING! SCENE STORM APPROACHING! This weekend we will hammer home the philosophies already articulated in previous workshops in this series: 1) You must write badly to write well. 2) The value of and commitment to short assignments and ugly first drafts (paraphrased from Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird) is crucial. 3) Writing is an act of faith. 4) No part of this process is a waste of time, whether it ends up in your book or not.
Weekend #4: CORRAL CRITICAL MASS (OR MESS)! This weekend will be about evaluating your collected scenes and the tools related to this process. Using a mapping system to identify and organize elements within the body of the work to-date, we look for the best possible plot points, structures, and themes organically present in the work. We employ a piece of the method to identify scene purpose, value, and strength. We explore possible revelations and epiphanies. Whose story is it, really? Who should tell it, or how should it be told? Why is it important? Why does the story need to be told now? Why do the characters do what they do? We identify holes that need filling and fat and suckers that need to be cut away. In essence, we will be searching for the beating heart of a book in a partially written, very rough semblance of a novel manuscript. At this point we will also discuss the individual writers' needs regarding linier and global mapping.
Weekend #5: SUPER CHARGE YOUR MUSCLE CAR. This weekend's focus is revision at a deep level. This is not correction, but rather it is further development, deeper writing, layering of experience, adding new elements to take the work to a richer place. We are not looking under the hood to repair so much as to increase power and performance of character, action, language, plot, structure, voice, story, beginnings, endings, middles and so on.
Weekend #6: CIRCLE UP IN THE LOCKER ROOM. This weekend focuses on what is required of a writer who wants to be published, on what to do now that you have a novel draft, or are close to a novel draft. What does it mean to say you are a writer? What place does publication have in the life of a writer, if any? What is the role of rejection and revision for the writer who wants to be published? How must a writer think of revision and multiple revisions? How do you get helpful feedback? When do you know it's time to try for a public life for your work? What is a synopsis? How should it appear on the page? What should a cover letter say? How do you find an agent or an editor/publisher? What is the agent's role? Why do you need one? What can you do to collect a few planks for your platform? How does publication affect your work? How can you best approach working with an editor who has paid you for your book and now wants you to change it? How will the possible market place affect your book and your life as a writer-or just your life in general? What does it mean to be a writer as opposed to an "author"? What is a writing life, really? What happens if this novel doesn't get an agent or doesn't get published? What happens if it does get published but doesn't sell? In this final workshop, we talk about what to embrace, what to steer clear of, what to let roll off your back, and how to happily let an advanced manuscript do its job while you get back to yours.
DETAILS:
THIS WILL BE THE FOURTH SESSION OF THE EXTENDED NOVEL WORKSHOPS.
WORKSHOP DATES FOR "NOVEL FIVE:"
April 30 - May 1, 2011 Weekend #1: WHO ARE YOUR PEOPLE?
Aug 27 - 28, 2011 Weekend #2: WHERE THE HECK ARE WE?
Nov 19 - 20, 2011 Weekend #3: WARNING! SCENE STORM APPROACHING!
Feb 25 - 26, 2012 Weekend #4: CORRAL CRITICAL MASS (OR MESS)!
May 19 - 20, 2012 Weekend #5: SUPER CHARGE YOUR MUSCLE CAR.
Aug 25 - 26, 2012 Weekend #6: CIRCLE UP IN THE LOCKER ROOM.
The cost of the workshop will be $225.00 per weekend due two weeks before each workshop. All workshops will be held in the former Orr Mountain Winery building between Sweetwater and Madisonville, Tenn. Sessions will run 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Saturday and 8:30 - 3:30 Sunday. Morning snacks, coffee, hot tea, etc., will be available. We will break for lunch from 12:30 p.m. - 1:30 p.m. Saturday, 11:30 - 12:30 Sunday. Soft drinks, water and lunch will be provided both days. Saturday night dinner will be on your own, with a suggested restaurant of the day for those who want to eat with group members.
The Magnuson Hotel, exit 60 off I-75, is offering a special rate of $58.00 per night for 1 - 2 people for course participants. Extra people are $8.00 each. Rooms at the Magnuson are equipped with refrigerators, microwaves, and wireless internet. There is an indoor pool, a hot tub and free breakfast bar and free dinner buffet. Mention Learning Events/Sue Richardson Orr when making reservations. Phone number is 423-337-3541.
Attendees will be asked to purchase The Glimmer Train Guide to Writing Fiction.
Learning Events will work to have copies available for purchase at the first session if participants need them.
** Please e-mail Sue at theorrs@usit.net or call 423-420-1152 if you want to register. **
Workshop group is limited to 16.
PLEASE NOTE:
COMMITMENT FOR PAYMENTOF $1350 FOR ALL 6 WEEKENDS IS REQUIRED
REGISTRATION FORM for Extended Novel Workshop 6 week-end series:
Cost $225.00 Date/dates paid for _______________________________
Name_____________________________ e-mail __________________________
Address___________________________ phone __________________________
____________________________
Check to Sue Richardson Orr enclosed for _____________
Mail to:
Sue Richardson Orr
359 Pumpkin Hollow Rd
Madisonville, TN 37354