Category: Classes

The Romance of Travel Writing

Van Gogh painted Starry Night in the part of Provence.

Travel writing is one of the most satisfying and diverting kinds of writing. It calls on all of the skills of a creation nonfiction writer—dramatic scenes, character sketches, concrete detail, point of view, scene by scene construction. It’s very difficult to do well, but here are 10 tips for succeeding at it.

  • MAKE DESTINATION ATTRACTIVE: Make the place sound appealing – Though you can occasionally trash a destination in some publications, most publications insist on painting a positive picture of the place. Why else would a reader bother finishing story?
  • FOCUS ON ITS UNIQUENESS– Try to describe what makes the place distinctive and particular. Avoid talk about sunsets and vistas unless they’re very specific to the place.
  • AVOID CLICHES– Much travel writing is simply riddled with clichés: charming, rustic, romantic, etc. Try to find fresh descriptions of the place.
  • CREATE ONE DOMINANT IMPRESSION – What one idea do you want to leave with the reader about your trip to Katmandu? You can include a myriad of details about the cows, the scooters, the chock-a-block brick buildings, but make sure that they add up to one central idea of the place. Chaos? Rich cultural heritage? At the brink of civil war? Pick one and go with it.
  • SEEK OUT DRAMA, EPIPHANIES – If you’re writing a story about Puerto Vallarta, don’t simply wander around like a tourist and write about your sore feet and aching back. Instead, actively seek out situations which will demonstrate the color and uniqueness of the place. Book a trip with Pedro, the local guide, rather than the big, glitzy resort package. Pedro will more likely yield a rich and colorful story. Example: I booked a fishing trip on board a local boat out of Ixtapa, rather than on board and a big American Cabin Cruiser.
  • If you’d like to learn more about travel writing, sign up for my winter class, Follow the Story, or my Travel Writing in Provence Class.

Pulitzer Prize Winner Speaks to The Writer’s Workshop Writing Class

Rich Read
Pulitzer Prize Winner Rich Read Speaks to The Writer’s Workshop writing class.

Rich Read wanted to tell a story. He’d visited southeast Asia and saw an immense economic crisis unfolding. But how to make that interesting to a general reader of the Oregonian where he worked as a reporter?

“I didn’t want to write an economic treatise because no one would read it,” he said when he spoke to my fall writing class for The Writer’s Workshop. “I wanted to find a product from the Northwest, sold to the middle class, and follow it. I started casting around and came up with idea of French fry which is a multi-billion dollar industry. The russet Burbank potato is perfect for fast food French fries. It was a crazy idea for a regional newspaper.”

The proposal was denied, so he retooled it and sent it again. Denied. Then managing editor Therese Bottomly got wind of it. “I love this story,” she said. “We’ve got to do it.”

Rich was assigned to work with editor Jack Hart, a specialist in narrative writing, and author of Storycraft which I use in my writing courses for The Writer’s Workshop.

“What are you trying to do?” Jack said.

“I want to follow the river of French fries,” Rich explained.

“You want one container to give it drama and specificity,” Jack said. “You need to find one container and follow it around the world.”

Rich took Jack’s advice, found such a container, and wrote a terrific story about French Fries and the global supply chain.

“Writing is always harder than the reporting,” he said. “This was my first try at narrative writing. Jack Hart walked me through how to do it. We chose John McPhee as a model because he’s such a great explanatory writer. Each scene would have a point.”

It ended up being a multipart series and got a great reaction. When Rich returned to the office, there was a bouquet of flowers on the desk and a note, “You’re a finalist for the Pulitzer.”

On day of the awards, the editorial staff gathered in the newsroom to hear he’d won it. “They wheeled in crates of MacDonald’s French fries and champagne,” he says. “It was really great for the paper.”

Read the story here: https://www.pulitzer.org/winners/richard-read.

Richard Read is a freelance reporter based in Seattle, where he was a national reporter and bureau chief for the Los Angeles Times from 2019 to 2021. A two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, he was a senior writer and foreign correspondent for The Oregonian, working for the Portland, Oregon newspaper from 1981 to 1986 and 1989 until 2016.

Set the Scene: How to Write a Dramatic Scene Narrative Writing Class

SUMMARY SCENE OPENINGS – WRITING PROCEDURE

V.S. Naipaul
The Writer’s Workshop classes discuss how V.S. Naipaul uses dramatic scene to tell his stories.

COPYRIGHT THE WRITER’S WORKSHOP

Scenic writing is the basis for some of the most moving, satisfying, sophisticated works of literature. It is especially effective in bringing readers into the story because it helps them create a world, a world that you the writer have inhabited and can share with the reader through words. Scenes present a visual, sensual world the reader can inhabit, a kind of imaginary garden with real toads, whether that’s the world of the astronaut program of Tom Wolfe’s The Right Stuff, the vast landscapes of the Southwest in the work of Terry Tempest Williams, or the hard-bitten, humorous Irish Catholic childhood of memoirist Frank McCourt or the travel stories of V.S. Naipaul.

1) SETTING THE SCENE

  1. a) OPENING SENTENCE: Find a sentence that creates suspense and foreshadows what will happen. This makes clear to the reader that information in summary lead is important and needs to be read. In William Stafford’s memoir Down in my Heart, he uses the opening line, “When are men dangerous?” which accomplishes this perfectly.
  2. b) SETTING DETAILS: Provide details that suggest what will happen in scene. These should be chosen for their inherent interest, color and humor and also for what they illustrate about main point of story. For instance, in Down in My Heart, Stafford includes details like “loafing around in the Sabbath calm.” These details help set the scene, and also create suspense. Readers suspect that something will soon shatter this tranquility. The best scenic details do double duty, both painting a picture and creating suspense.
  3. c) NUT GRAPH: After sketching in the scene and introducing the people, the writer makes a transition to the action. This transition is crucial, often spelling out the main point or alerting the reader that something important will happen in the scene. William Stafford’s repetition of the phrase “When are men dangerous?” clues in the reader that the tranquil atmosphere of rural Arkansas is about to end.

This transition usually leads to a nut graph, a paragraph that suggests or explains the larger point or goal of the scene and furnishes its larger context. It’s called a nut graph because it puts all of these things together in a nutshell. Who? What? When? Where? And most importantly, why? As in, why should the reader care? What will the scene accomplish?

For more on how to set a scene, please sign up for my winter narrative and Seattle writing class, Follow the Story.

Photos for next issue of The Writer’s Workshop Review

Flannery-O’Connor for The Writer’s Workshop.

Downtown Bordeaux for The Writer's Workshop.
Downtown Bordeaux for The Writer’s Workshop.

Downtown Bordeaux for The Writer's Workshop.
Downtown Bordeaux for The Writer’s Workshop.

Baseball umpire for The Writers Workshop.
Baseball umpire for The Writers Workshop.

Redwoods for The Writer’s Workshop.

Photo

Wat Bangkok for The Writer’s Workshop Review.

Build Your Author Platform

Beth Jusino spoke to The Writer’s Workshop about how to build and author platform.

Building an Author Marketing Plan That Attracts Readers, Sells Books, and Won’t Make You Miserable

It’s no one’s favorite part of publishing, but establishing some kind of public-facing presence (marketing) is essential for writers today. So let’s talk about how to do it well. In the course of my spring writing class, Beth Jusino shared what she’s learned, as both an author and a consultant, about specific, practical, and inexpensive ways writers can take advantage of their own strengths and interests to gather a community, even before their first book comes out. (Surprise: it doesn’t HAVE to be social media.) Author and publishing consultant Beth Jusino spoke to The Writer’s Workshop spring writing class about how to make this happen.

What do we really mean when we talk about author marketing?

Marketing is NOT a bad word. Marketing is a collection of things you do over time to build positive name recognition. No time is too soon to start. Marketing is a long-term process. There is no formula. It starts as soon as you think about publishing. What can I commit to doing regularly over time?

What do you hate doing?

You can take this off the list.

What do you love doing?

Focus on this.

What is an author platform?

Platform is long-term engagement with target audience that establishes name recognition and trust. How are you engaged in your community? Who is your audience? Who are the first 100 stranger who bill buy your book?

Do you know influencers who can bring their followers? Do you know published authors who can blurb your book? Media person, editors?

How will people find you?

Here are four common ways start building platform 1) publish short stories or articles. 2) Blogging. 3) Contests for writers? 4) Social media (know your audience and know where they are). Facebook is different from Twitter.

For more on building an author platform, please subscribe to my email newsletter or contact me about taking a writing class!

Review of Lawrence Wright’s Novel The End of October

The End of October reviewed by Nicholas O'Connell of The Writer's Workshop.
The End of October reviewed by Nicholas O’Connell of The Writer’s Workshop.

 

Video interview with Pulitzer Prize winner Lawrence Wright

Lawrence-Wright-Author-Photo-Credit-to-Kenny-Braun.j
Lawrence-Wright-Author-Photo-Credit-to-Kenny-Braun.

By Nicholas O’Connell

Talk about prescient. Lawrence Wright’s new novel, The End of October, appeared in April, 2020, right as COVID-19 exploded across the U.S. and world. A medical thriller, the novel tells the story of a fictional pandemic caused by a mysterious new virus, Kongoli, which spreads like wildfire, threating to bring the world to its knees. Written by the Pulitzer Prize-winner and best-selling author, Lawrence Wright, it tells the tale through the eyes of Dr. Henry Parsons, a microbiologist and epidemiologist, who travels to an internment camp in Indonesia where 47 people have died from acute hemorrhagic fever.

Like few others, Parsons understands the magnitude of the potential pandemic. Working on behalf of the World Health Organization, he wracks his brain to figure out how to combat the virus. By choosing a main character like Parsons, Wright is able to explain virology in all its complexity. Like his previous book, The Looming Tower, the novel displays amazingly skilled reporting, yielding surprising observations: “For Henry, the most surprising feature of viruses was that they were a guiding force behind evolution. If the infected organism survived, it sometimes retained a portion of the viral material in its own genome. The legacy of ancient infections might be found in as much as 8 percent of the human genome, including the genes that controlled memory formation, the immune system, and cognitive development. We wouldn’t be who we are without them.”

As readers follow Henry’s attempts to stop the virus, we learn fascinating lessons about viruses, including Kongoli, and COVID-19 the current scourge.

Despite Parson’s best efforts, he fails to prevent an infected Indonesian man, Bambang Idris, from joining the annual Muslim Hajj to Mecca. Wright describes the man’s journey in rich, colorful, and terrifying detail, as the Bambang unwittingly infects millions of others. The novel throws into relief the varieties of global cultures, from Muslim Saudi Arabia to contemporary United States, and how the virus infects all of them.

As the pandemic rages, Parsons seeks to return to his family in the United States. He hitches a ride on a nuclear submarine to head back to the U.S. Predictably, the pandemic erupts in the close quarters of the vessel. Using his wits and expertise, he discovers an important breakthrough about the virus.

By the time he returns home, American civilization is collapsing. The novel paints a credibly dystopian picture of the destruction such a virus might cause. Though characters like the Parsons’ wife Jill are insufficiently sketched and some of the dialogue is stilted, overall, the novel is a riveting page turner that warns what our future might look like if we don’t get COVID-19 under control.

Nicholas O’Connell is the founder of The Writer’s Workshop, a creative writing program that teaches writing classes.

The Perfect Pitch: Story Ideas in Writing Classes

THE PERFECT PITCH: STORY IDEAS  IN WRITING CLASSES

 

Narrative writers organize their books and shorter pieces in terms of a story or chronology, probably the oldest and most compelling way of relating information. In Aspects of the Novel, E.M. Forster speculates that the earliest storytelling took place around a campfire after tired bands of Neanderthal hunters had killed a woolly mammoth. Natural selection favored hunters who told a well-crafted, suspenseful story; those who rambled endlessly or droned on about their personal exploits were hit over the head with a club.

Good story ideas for narrative writing meet the following criteria:

E.M. Forster
E.M. Forster, story ideas for writing classes.

1) BASED ON SCENE – Organized around one or more scenes. Unlike a feature story, these pieces should be composed almost entirely of scenes. There can be passages of narrative summary that provide background information, but these should be incorporated into or around the scene.

2) EMPHASIZE CHARACTER – Elucidation of character lies at heart of these stories. They can convey information, but this should be done through the personalities central to the story.

3) ENCOURAGE CURIOSITY – Writers should appeal to readers’ curiosity, pulling them along with suspenseful storytelling, not letting them go until the end.

4) CONFLICT AND RESOLUTION FORMAT – The story has to be organized around a conflict, whether an external one like climbing a mountain, or an internal one of overcoming stuttering. Most of the best stories have a conflict that embraces both the internal and the external. Example: John has to overcome his fear to climb the mountain. Melissa meets a supportive speech therapist who helps her speak normally.

5) TIMELY – Any trend or event that’s coming up can serve as a timely tie to the story. A timely angle puts your story idea to the top of the editor’s pile.

6) PERSONALLY INTERESTING – Writers usually do their best work on subjects that matter to them. Try to find topics that you are passionate about, as Gerard emphasizes in Creative Nonfiction.

7) PUBLISHABLE – Not every idea that appeals to the writer will gain favor with editors, however. Find ideas that interest you and the editor.

For more on story ideas, please consider signing up for my writing classes.

The Writing Life: Seattle Writing Classes

Flannery O'Connor and The Habit of Art in Seattle writing classes.
Flannery O’Connor and The Writing Life in Seattle writing classes.

In her essay collection, Mystery and Manners, Flannery O’Connor talks about writing as a habit of art. I discuss this approach in The Writer’s Workshop talk on The Writing Life, on Wednesday, Oct. 2 at 7 p.m. in room 221 at the Good Shepherd Center in Seattle’s Wallingford neighborhood. This approach emphasizes that writing is a craft and a daily discipline as well as an art. It relies as much on regular practice as inspiration. While inspiration plays a large part in any literary breakthrough, the habit of art gives concrete expression to inspiration, making the story or book possible. Here are some of thoughts on how to develop your own habit of art.

WRITING AS A PROCESS – Thinking of writing as a process allows you to complete a story in a series of steps, avoiding the paralysis of perfectionism. Instead, write a draft (a “shitty first draft” in Anne Lamott’s memorable phrase), organize and polish it. By breaking things down into a series of steps you increase the odds of creating something special.

SET A SCHEDULE – Set up a time to write, ideally five days a week for an hour or so a day. If possible, write for more than that. It takes practice to hone and perfect your craft. This comes by repetition. I usually write about three hours a day, five days a week, sometimes more, sometimes a little less. I schedule the time and try to stick to it.

SHORT ASSIGNMENTS – As the Chinese say, the thousand mile journey begins with the first step. Give yourself short assignments every day – a page, a lead, a character sketch. Then perhaps complete a story or novel chapter every week or so. Making steady progress increases your confidence and the fluency of your writing.

I’ll be offering a free class, The Writing Life, on Wednesday, Sept. 16 at 6 p.m. via Zoom video conference. You’ll have a chance to learn how to get started with your story and hear about our writing classes. Please RSVP.

Take a Journey with a Traveler’s Tale

Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain
Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain is an outstanding traveler’s tale which I reference in my Seattle writing classes, online writing classes and travel writing classes.

If you love to travel like I do, you’ve probably found the last six months a challenging time. After canceling my Travel Writing class in Spain and an assignment to ski in Austria, I have hunkered down at home to write, teach, shelter with my family and occasionally venture out to a local cafe. Such is the situation in the world today.

During this time, I’ve found great pleasure in reading travel books, something I’ve done in the past as research. Now it’s become a pleasure in its own right as well as preparation for when I can hit the road again.

I’ve been traveling vicariously with Mark Twain (The Innocents Abroad) Beryl Markham (West with the Night), V.S. Naipaul (Among the Believers), Charles Nichol (The Fruit Palace) and Bill Bryson (A Walk in the Woods). These are some of the titles I reference in my Seattle writing classes, online writing classes and especially in my travel writing classes. Here’s more on the books below.

The Innocents Abroad, or The New Pilgrims’ Progress is a travel book by Mark Twain published in 1869 which humorously chronicles what Twain called his “Great Pleasure Excursion” on board the chartered vessel Quaker City through Europe and the Holy Land with a group of American travelers in 1867. It was the best-selling of Twain’s works during his lifetime, as well as one of the best-selling travel books of all time.

West with the Night is a 1942 memoir by Beryl Markham, chronicling her experiences growing up in Kenya in the early 1900s, leading to careers as a racehorse trainer and bush pilot there. It is considered a classic of outdoor literature and was included in the U.S.A.’s Armed Services Editions shortly after its publication.

Among the Believers: An Islamic Journey is a book by the Nobel laureate V. S. Naipaul. Published in 1981, the book chronicles a six-month journey across Asian after the Iranian Revolution. V.S. Naipaul explores the culture and the explosive situation in countries where Islamic fundamentalism was taking root. His travels start with Iran, on to Pakistan, Malaysia and Indonesia, with a short stop in Pakistan and Iran. Like the best travel books is prescient, indicating what was about to unfold in the region.

The Fruit Palace is a classic travel story by Charles Nicholl, chronicling his quest for ‘The Great Cocaine Story’. The book is set in the eighties in Columbia and describes not only the cocaine trade, but the wonder of everyday life in the country. The Fruit Palace is a little whitewashed café that legally dispenses tropical fruit juices as well as a meeting place for black marketers. It’s here that the story begins.

A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail is a 1998 travel book by writer Bill Bryson, describing his attempt to walk the Appalachian Trail with his friend Stephen Katz, a less than competent outdoorsman whose foibles contribute mightily to this entertaining book. It’s a hilarious account of their adventures and misadventures, with Bryson’s trademark humor coming to the fore.

Summer Reads for Tumultuous Times from The Writer’s Workshop

Seabiscuit serves as an outstanding example of narrative in writing classes from The Writer’s Workshop.

In these tumultuous times, it seems hard to imagine how things can return to normal. How can we get through Covid, police brutality, protests, riots, high unemployment and general malaise? One of the best ways to find hope in dark times lies in reading about other challenging periods in our past. Some of the most remarkable achievements took place during similarly perilous moments.

Here are four outstanding books that illuminate how our country negotiated difficult circumstances and emerged stronger from them. In addition, these books serve as great examples of narrative writing, the subject of my writing classes at The Writer’s Workshop. These books provide useful perspective, dazzling form and wonderfully satisfying summer reading:

Seabiscuit by Laura Hillenbrand – The story of Seabiscuit, an American thoroughbred racehorse who became the top money-winning racehorse in the 1940s. High-strung, talented and rebellious, the horse languished until a washed up cowboy and horse whisperer, Tom Smith, became his trainer, won his trust and turned him into a champion, serving as a beacon of hope during the Great Depression.

The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson – This New York Times bestseller tells the story of the architect who planned the construction of the great Chicago World’s Fair of 1893 and the serial killer who used the fair as a lure. Erik Larson recounts the tale of the architect and the killer in a spellbinding narrative style, demonstrating how to use scene and characterization to bring a story to life

The Boys in the Boat by Daniel James Brown – This nonfiction classic celebrates the 1936 U.S. men’s Olympic eight-oar rowing team—nine working class young men who surprised the elite rowing teams from the East Coast, Oxford and Cambridge, and finally the Nazis as they rowed for gold in front of Adolf Hitler. Set against in the Great Depression, these young men reminded the country of what can be done when everyone quite literally pulls together.

The Autobiography of Frederick Douglas by Frederick Douglass – This outstanding 1845 memoir and treatise on abolition was written by Douglass, a former slave and renowned orator about his time in Lynn, Massachusetts. It’s the most famous example of the slave narrative, a literary form used by many former slaves and which has served as a great inspiration for contemporary black writers such as my former professor and mentor, Charles Johnson. The book is a gripping read, with a strong narrative voice and style that fueled the abolitionist movement in the early 19th century in the U.S.

Not only do these books offer hope in tough times, they serve as great examples of narrative writing and useful models for your own work. If you’d like help in learning how to tell YOUR story, please consider signing up for one of my Seattle writing classes or online writing classes through The Writer’s Workshop. Let me know if I can help you tell your story!