As some of you already know, this year I want to do a workshop that lasts at least one week on my blog. These are meant to be intense, short workshops. In January I did a workshop on Organizing Your Novel, and this month I'll be doing a workshop on characterization. These workshops are designed to help writers with a first draft figure out what they want their story to look like in the next draft, and to help them figure their characters out as well.
I've come up with a theoretical list of workshops for the next year. I'm hoping for some input on what you think would be most useful. Take a look at my list and let me know what you think. Suggestions are welcome.
January-Organizing your novel
February-Characterization
March-Editing
April-Developing a Religion
May-Dear Diary Workshop
June-Developing Mythology
July-Developing a History
August-Increasing Your Productivity (Scheduling workshop w/prompts)
September-Short Story workshop (writing a short story)
October-Character and Plot Building month long workshop
November-Nanowrimo related workshop
December-Short Story Editing
What do you think of this list? Which workshops are you most interested in? What do you think could be better replaced by something else?
This is a list of ten things you can look forward to here on this blog over the coming year. I've been planning quite a few workshops and things to do around here to make life more interesting. I've also been debating making a forum for these workshops. Anyone who would be willing to help me run it should contact me at diannalgunn@gmail.com about it.
Here are some things you can expect to see:
1. Early Releases Of Ebooks Bleed and Myths of Tamraq will both be announced here before anywhere else. I will also be releasing a couple free PDFs of myths. A Cutter's Journey will be announced here and on its own website a week before I go to any of my regular forums and places to announce it.
2. Nanowrimo World-Building Workshop This will be a two week workshop, with a half hour exercise every day. You can expect things like building a God, building a religion, looking at architecture, looking at weather, culture, and art. It will be run in the second week and second last week of October.
3. Nanowrimo Pep Talks I will be doing a weekly pep talk for Nanowrimo once again on this blog this year, because I had lots of fun last year. I'll also be looking for a couple other Nanoers and asking them to do guest post pep talks.
4. Dear Diary Workshop This will be going on next February. I will be doing my own Dear Diary, and each day have a list of questions to consider when writing your own. More on this later, when I have a proper 'course' outline type of thing.
5. World-Building Workshop This will be a multi-post workshop, each post focusing on a different part of the world building. There will be two exercises a week. This and the following few workshops already have basic outlines, and I'm seriously considering starting a forum for the different workshops on this blog.
6. Religion-Building Workshop This is another multi-post workshop which will be six weeks long, one exercise per week. It will cover how I usually build my religions and have various questions to ask. One of the exercises will be myth-building.
7. God-Building Workshop The Gods are characters too. This will be a four post workshop, two posts each over two weeks, about how to create a God.
8. Culture-Building Workshop This will be a six week workshop like the Religion one, with exercises focusing on art, myth, music and language.
9. Character-Building Workshop This workshop will be like the others, showing how I develop characters.
10. Plot-Building Workshop This workshop will cover various ways to build plot, including my reviews on two or three different methods and an overview of my own personal method.
These and much more will be coming over the next year. Thinking about it, I will be creating a forum in October which will have sub-forums for each workshop so that people who do the workshops at any time can discuss them.
Thanks for reading,
~Dianna
I often see writers on various forums asking the same questions. Usually they're questions about things like chapter length, pacing, character building-all those important things. One of the most frequent questions asked isn't specifically about your story though-it's about developing your voice.
Writers ask 'How does one develop their voice?'
And other writers generally answer 'By practicing.'
It's the truth. The only way to really develop your voice as a writer is by writing. You have to experiment; learn what forms of writing you're comfortable with-novels, novellas, short stories, poetry. You have to figure out what genres you like to write in-again, something you can only really learn by trying different ones. You have to figure out what PoVs are comfortable for you: first, second, third.
All of these things you can only learn by writing. Most of us, when we start writing, emulate our favourite writers to varying degrees-some of us do it consciously, and for some of us it just sort of happens. Over time we break away from these emulations and develop our own writing style, which usually still has some influence from our favourite writers but which has become unique, distinct to us.
To develop your voice, you should write, write, and write some more. Try some prompts, some exercises. Try to stretch yourself throughout various genres. Try playing with different chapter lengths. Different viewpoints. Experiment. Try writing flash fiction and try writing novels. Figure out what works for you.
As you write more and more your own distinct voice will begin to come out of the words, out onto paper. You will develop a certain way of saying things, a certain speed at which you usually say them. Some of us end up with flowery voices-Anne Rice-and others end up with brutal, working-man voices-Stephen King-but most of us are somewhere in the middle.
We all have our own voice. It's not really about developing it, it's about finding it and learning to use it properly.
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