A teaching weekend and filtering time through character

I’m turning to a weekend of teaching from copy editing and image gathering the Janis Joplin bio which is — TA DA! — now posted with a publication date on Amazon. Really. Go see. It’s so cool to see because, after five years, it’s going to happen.

Back to teaching — anyhow, I’m focusing on filtering time through character this weekend. I find that talking about summary or exposition, real time and slow time from the perspective of a primary character helps writers to keep their writerly voices off the page. When readers hear the narrator, it can distance them, as if they’re in the back row of a theater. You want your reader to feel close to the characters and to the story. The goal is to make readers feel they’re sitting first row, center stage. 

Write well!