Characters: How to Make Them Pop Off the Page with June Melby

It has sometimes been said that Character = Plot, that interesting characters on their own will drive the narrative of a story. We know that the best books make us feel deeply invested in the characters. That dull books leave you wondering, why should I care? So, how do you do it? How can you describe a character so that readers will not just see them but feel their presence? How can you avoid using the dreaded “driver’s license description:” female, 5’7″, brown hair, glasses? And what if you want it to be funny? This workshop will address strategies for creating and describing interesting characters, based on people you know and people you invent. This offering is applicable for writers of both fiction and nonfiction and time will be spent trying out various techniques. (We’ll include special tips for those writing memoir who fear being banned from future family holidays if they do the job wrong!)

Class meets in person Saturday, August 19, noon – 2 pm 

Class size: Minimum 4. Maximum 10.

Member discount: Members of Write On receive a 10% discount on all classes and workshops. To become a member, please click here. To receive the discount, members must log in to the website using their unique password and enter member10 in the promotion code box. The code is case sensitive.

Teaching Artist: June Melby is the author of My Family and Other Hazards, a memoir about the retro 1950s miniature golf course her family ran for 30 years. It was a New York Times bestseller and winner of the Midwest Connections award. Her writing has appeared in Midnight Feasts (a children’s poetry anthology, Bloomsbury UK); The Bedford Reader; Ilanot Review; Muse/ A Journal; Los Angeles Review of Books; Utne Reader; McSweeney’s Internet Tendency; and The LA Weekly. As a performance poet, she has featured on literary stages, festivals, and art museums in the U.S. and in Europe as a solo artist or with her band “June Melby and Her Future Enemies.” She was a fellow at Ragdale, the Virginia Center for the Arts, awarded a Marcus Bach Fellowship, and winner of the City of Hamburg Kulturbehorde International Artists Award and Residency. She received an MFA in creative nonfiction from the University of Iowa, and currently lives in a log cabin in the woods of Iowa with her husband.

THIS SESSION IS NOW FULL