Playful Character Creation: Invent Compelling People For Your Stories — Live Workshop

Have you ever tried to write a complete backstory for each of your characters? Konstantin Stanislavski, the most famous acting teacher to ever live, is said to have insisted that every performer write down the full contents of their character’s medicine cabinet. Is that kind of exhaustive detail really necessary? Do your characters need medicine cabinets? 

National Book Award winner and best-selling author William Alexander is here to tell you that there’s a better way. This workshop will borrow better lessons from the theater to learn more playful techniques for creating new characters.

A sense of play unlocks the subconscious and its limitless creativity. It also fosters an intuitive understanding of your characters, which is far more valuable than any list of isolated facts about them. Join us to learn wildly theatrical techniques for inventing imaginary people by playing a Surrealist parlor game. 

In this workshop you will:

• learn character development techniques from the theater, made accessible and applicable to fiction writing;
• participate in game-based exercises that prompt unpredictable invention and creativity; 
• discover playfully intuitive ways to connect with your characters, which in turn brings them to life on the page. 

You’ll leave this workshop with a faster, more creative, more effective, and more fun way to craft the people who inhabit your stories!