Celebrity Saturday: Christopher Mohar: May 5 2018

VOICE LESSONS: WRITING PROSE THAT SINGS!

MAY 5th, 2018, 9:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m.

We’ve all heard the advice that as a writer you must “find your voice,” and it’s commonplace for book reviewers to refer to a trendy debutant novelist as a “hot new voice.” But what exactly makes a compelling voice? And how can you strengthen your own voice on the page?

This course seeks to de-mystify the nebulous notion of voice by giving writers practical tools for understanding its two key ingredients—syntax and diction—without resorting to those painful grammar exercises your sophomore English teacher marked up with red pen. We’ll place a special focus on revising your own prose to make it more graceful and efficient, and you’ll get pro tips on sentence construction, imagery, sound, rhythm, and metaphor. We’ll also dissect the techniques of successful published writers to see what makes their prose sing and how you can borrow similar strategies in your own work, with the aim of transcending mere imitation and moving onward to new inspiration and innovations all your own.

Legal disclaimer: Songwriting is invigorating, exhausting, infuriating and immensely rewarding. Rules will be broken.

CHRISTOPHER MOHAR is the author of The Denialist’s Almanac of American Plague and Pestilence, winner of the 2017 Etchings Press Novella Contest. He has been the recipient of a Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing Fellowship and The Southwest Review’s McGinnis Ritchie Award for fiction. Selected recent works can be found in The Mississippi Review, North American Review, Creative Nonfiction, Arts & Letters, Gastronomica, and New Stories from the Midwest (Indiana University Press). He is an adjunct instructor of creative writing at Mt. Mary University, and he lives in Madison, Wisconsin with his wife, daughter, and a chicken named Duck.

At AllWriters’, we strive to bring you the best! Several times a year, we offer a Celebrity Saturday, which brings in a better-known, better-published author to work with you for one intensive day. Celebrity Saturday authors have included Jane Hamilton, Jacquelyn Mitchard, Michael Perry, A. Manette Ansay, Marilyn Taylor, Ellen Kort, and many, many more! Celebrity Saturdays run from 9:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. and cost $95, which includes a lunch catered by Cafe De Art in Waukesha!