Sharon Oard Warner - A Character in Search of a Plot

The title for this workshop was inspired by a play entitled Six Characters in Search of an Author. First performed in 1921, this metadrama by Luigi Pirandello introduces a stage manager and his actors in the midst of rehearsal.  Imagine their surprise when six befuddled strangers wander onto the set.  Turns out, the interlopers are unfinished characters in need of an author to complete them.  Sound familiar?  Maybe you’ve tucked away a few such shadowy characters yourself.  If so, bring them out of the drawer, dust them off, and get ready to turn your sketches into portraits.  Memorable characters are both fully imagined and capable of surprising the author who created them. In this workshop, we will ponder the question of which comes first, character or plot.  (Note that the answer is dependent on the author, the characters, and the particular project.)   Writers who sign up can expect to work through both character and plot development.  We’ll experiment with scenarios, story maps, and the Aristotelean incline.  Because the class is generative, it matters not whether you’ve written a little or a lot because our focus will be on creating rather than critiquing.

Link to Instructor Letter.

Sharon Oard Warner is Professor of English/Creative Writing at the University of New Mexico and Co-Chair for the D. H. Lawrence Ranch Initiatives.  She has published four books—a collection of short fiction, Learning to Dance and Other Stories; an edited anthology, The Way We Write Now:Short Stories from the AIDS Crisis; as well as two novels, Deep in the Heart and Sophie’s House of Cards. 

Her stories have been published in Prairie Schooner, The Laurel Review, Other Voices, Green Mountains Review, and elsewhere.  Her scholarly essays have appeared in Studies in the Novel, Studies in the Short Story, Best Writing on Writing, The Writer’s Handbook, and in selected anthologies.  She has recently completed a feature film screenplay, No One’s Daughter.

Register here: http://ce.unm.edu/professional/business/rananim.php