Unique Writing Workshop in Asheville!

While there are excellent workshops on creative writing in the Asheville area, especially workshops with a close focus on developing character or writing setting or creating a dramatic plot, there are few, if any, workshops that address the writer’s most basic tool: the English language.

To Write Well’s next offering — February 7  through February 28 -Saturdays from 9:30 am to 12:30 p.m.  at UNC Asheville’s Rhoades-Robinson Hall– provides writers with close-in, hand-on experience with the structure of language, focusing on how to create impact through emphasis, rhythm and cadence, pacing, and suspense. This workshop is a unique opportunity for Asheville area writers — both fiction and non-fiction! — to gain valuable insights into the impact of their writing choices.

General Syllabus

for

Advanced Writing Workshop:

Impact of Style I: Structure

sponsored by To Write Well

OBJECTIVE:

The objective of this four-week workshop is to teach writers how to write at a higher level by intensively examining, then practicing, four basic elements of writing with impact.

Week 1: Understanding the Role of Structure in Style / The First Four Possibilities

Week 2: Writing Sentences That Resonate / The Next Seven Possibilities

Week 3: Hearing The Sound on the Page: Music / The Next Eight Possibilities

Week 4: Tying It All Together / The Last Ten Possibilities

GOAL:

The goal of this workshop is to train writers to understand and consciously use sentence and paragraph structure

• to create impact upon readers,

• to create rhythm and cadence for pace, and

• to set up coherence between the structure of the writing and the ideas being expressed.

Each week begins with a Saturday lecture and discussion (three hours). Students then return home to work independently throughout the week, working through the daily exercises with feedback from the instructor.

• The Role of Structure examines the purpose behind sentence structure, i.e., how the ear hears, and how the eyes see, language. By understanding how language interacts with readers, writers can purposefully select specific structures to create impact, achieving a voice unique to their writing.

• Writing Sentences That Resonate examines the ways in which structure creates emphasis, rhythm, expectation, and suspense.

• Hearing The Sound on The Page extends the writer’s understanding of structure and resonance through practice.

• Tying It All Together examines coherence from the perspective of unifying the writer’s ideas with the writer’s voice, so the written word is memorable for the reader.

Reference materials are provided.

The course text, The Art of Styling Sentences, by Ann Longknife, PhD, and K.D. Sullivan, is required, and the student must have the text by the first session.

For more info and to register: email Ashley at  writewell2009@gmail.com