Confluence 2007: Workshops

Confluence Writers Workshop :

Avoiding Central Casting
(or: Haven’t I Seen This Before?)

Friday 5pm-8pm.

We all know the importance of making our pivotal characters unique and well-developed, of making our key locales memorable, but what about the supporting elements? What about those characters we come up with on the spur of the moment to move the plot forward, those impromptu scenes we didn’t realize we needed until we noticed something was missing?

Those characters, those locations, those scenes won’t be as well-developed as their more-important counterparts -- nor should they be, lest we found our story bogged in superfluous detail. But the other extreme is just as undesirable; if we’re not careful, we’ll find our finely-crafted heroes spending all their time interacting with generic friends and generic neighbors, traveling from generic homes to generic workplaces to generic bars where the generic bartender gets them a generic drink so they can relax in the generic ambiance. Pulling stock characters out of central casting is a bad habit in any literature, but in speculative fiction, giving your reader the impression they’ve seen this all before can be disastrous.

Let semi-pro fiction veterans Joseph Benedetto and Pete Butler help you brainstorm ways to avoid this trap, to let your secondary characters and settings come to life quickly and efficiently, to even use them as an opportunity to add depth to your world without slowing-down the main story.

Write to pete(at)blairhippo(dot)com if you're interested in attending the workshop. The workshop is limited to 10 people, and you must be a Confluence member to attend. Pre-registration closed July 6.

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