Hello, writers! We are so pleased to continue our seasonal series of classes, Writing Nights! Each season, we’re diving deep into a theme, meeting weekly over Zoom with a group of writers of any experience level, offering mini-lectures and guided exercises, and providing our best answers to your questions.
This spring, our theme is Exploring Language and Voice in Fiction. It takes place on Thursday evenings from 5:00 - 6:15 Pacific/8:00-9:15 Eastern, from April 9th through May 7th. The classes will be recorded in case you can't make it live.
How many times have you set down a book and thought, “I’d follow that voice anywhere”?
Infusing every aspect of storytelling, language and voice are the mushrooms of your story forest, ever-present nutrients and facilitators of communication between your characters, settings, plot strands, and more.
And yet, sometimes in the process of crafting a whole story or novel–of plotting and discovering our characters and deciding on structure–we lose touch with the pleasures and importance of spending time with language and voice. The more closely we pay attention to the language in our own writing and others', the more we can begin to recognize and capture that which seems elusive.
Where are you in your process?
Writing Nights are always for everyone.
If you’re beginning a manuscript, voice and language can act as an entry point to your story and characters.
If you are midway through and need a boost, a focus on language can bring you back to what you love about your story.
If you’re revising, attention to voice and language allows you to hone and refine what you’ve crafted to make sure you’re satisfied with your draft at the line level.
Over the past seven years, Nina and Elana have worked together as teachers, co-writers, and readers for one another’s work. Some of our most fulfilling times are spent talking together about writing. We know from sharing our enthusiasm, our setbacks, and our discoveries how gratifying and joyful writing can be, even when it’s also often difficult and solitary. We want to create a space where others can experience this feeling of connection.
Nina LaCour is the bestselling, Lambda Award-winning and Michael L. Printz Award-winning author of picture books, a chapter book series, young adult novels, and adult literary fiction. Her novel We Are Okay was named one of TIME Magazine’s Top 100 YA Novels of All Time and among Kirkus Review's Best Books of the 21st Century (So Far). Her debut novel Hold Still won the Northern California Book Award and a William C. Morris Honor. Her adult literary debut, Yerba Buena, was a Book of the Month Club selection, Target Book Club selection, and Indie Next Pick.
Elana K. Arnold is the author of critically acclaimed and award-winning picture books, chapter books, middle grade novels and young adult novels, including The Blood Years, winner of the National Jewish Book Award and Sydney Taylor Book Award, named as one of Kirkus Review's Best Books of the 21st Century (So Far), as well as a Boston Horn/Horn Book Award and California Book Award honoree; the Printz Honor winner Damsel; the National Book Award finalist What Girls Are Made Of, and Global Read Aloud selection A Boy Called Bat and its sequels.
Both Nina and Elana teach, guest lecture, and appear at conferences and conventions around the country and internationally. Garnering starred reviews from Kirkus Reviews, Publishers Weekly, BookPage, The Horn Book, Booklist, School Library Journal, and others, their books have been translated into over a dozen languages. Additionally, their novels and books for younger readers are frequent Junior Library Guild selections. Their young adult novels have been named among the best books of the year by the American Library Association, School Library Journal, Kirkus Reviews, Booklist, Publishers Weekly, Rise: A Feminist Book Project, Seventeen, Bustle, The Horn Book, The Boston Globe, Boston Public Library, Chicago Public Library, and New York Public Library, and more.
During Winter Writing Nights, join us to explore the myriad functions of language and voice, including:
the unique fingerprints of a writer’s voice, and how your own is linked to your singular way of experiencing the world
how experimenting with elements such as vocabulary, punctuation, and sentence structure can change the “music” of a description or scene
the mechanics of tone, including syntax, diction, level of formality, and point of view in narrators that are overtly "voicy" and those whose voices are subtle yet distinctive
the difference between your authorial voice and the various tones that may suit a particular character or moment in your story
Two Payments
$175 x 2
- Live Zooms with Elana, Nina, and a group of passionate writers (with recordings if you can't make it live)
- Mini-lectures on craft to illuminate narrative methods
- Guided, generative writing exercises
- The opportunity to ask Nina and Elana questions about your work
- New perspectives and tools to apply to your stories
One Payment
$350
- Live Zooms with Elana, Nina, and a group of passionate writers (with recordings if you can't make it live)
- Mini-lectures on craft to illuminate narrative methods
- Guided, generative writing exercises
- The opportunity to ask Nina and Elana questions about your work
- New perspectives and tools to apply to your stories