Excitement on the Page with Peter Bricklebank

Using examples from published works and writing exercises, this workshop is designed to generate new material and send you back to your page less blank and more lively.

If we’re going to earn and keep our readers’ interest, we need to generate excitement on the page and that doesn’t just come from a hyperactive plot or having a fabulous story to relate. Good writing is alive. It surprises. It endears. It challenges. It reaches. So we need to infuse our narrative, fiction or nonfiction, with energy. But short of strapping our essay or memoir or story down and waiting for lightning, or inspiration, to strike the bolt in their neck, how do we animate our work? How do we make our prose, less prosaic? To achieve that spark we need to consider pattern, surprise, rhythm, images, tension, and, what else, language.