"But Elizabeth," you ask me. "Why has it taken you so long to write about this workshop if it was over a week ago?"
To which I shush you and bribe you with candy. I've been deep in the writing trenches, not to mention some stress from the daily life, and my brain can be likened to tapioca pudding. A day old. Left in the sun.
Janice's workshop was positively amazing. I have to admit, I was really nervous meeting her. I've read The Shifter and Blue Fire, and really enjoyed both books. They are fun to read with an excellent plot, but she doesn't skimp on the characterization.
I was more than ecstatic when I meet her and discovered she's a great person. Smart, funny, excellent teacher, and very...approachable. Somehow I am making her sound like a car, but you get what I mean. She's one of those people you feel like you can talk to for hours and forget what time it was.
During the workshop she talked about how point of view can change your writing. Janice said a lot of common problems--pacing, telling versus showing, info dumping, etc--can be fixed if you're in better control of the point of view of the character. It makes sense to me. If you're inside the character's head, you're going to notice only what's in that person's character.
She also talked about telling versus showing. It seems I have more telling in my writing that I knew about. Conveniently, Janice has a post about that very thing today! So you should pop over and check out her post.
The best thing about this workshop is I was able to really see where my weaknesses are. This is invaluable knowledge. Maybe get a critique, or just take a hard look at your writing, but figuring out where you can improve is the first step to...you guessed it, improving.
So take a gander at Janice's blog post and tighten up any telling you might be doing by accident.
And then stop by and let me know how you figure out what areas you need to improve in! Hypothetically of course, since we're all perfect, right? Right.
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