Action, Dialogue and Description
[A writing course in which skills in action, dialogue and description are
practiced.]
"I never start with an idea. I always
see something. I start with an image, a cigarette being put out in a
jar of mustard,
for instance, or the remains, the wreckage of a dinner left
on the table. Pop cans in the fireplace, that sort of thing. And
a feeling goes with that. And that feeling seems to transport
me back to that particular time and place, and the
ambiance of the time. But it is the image, and the emotion
that goes with that image – that's what's important."
-- Raymond Carver*
Course Description
In this class, writers will develop new material by exercises designed to help writers avoid explanation, summary and exposition and instead build character-driven stories on a foundation of sensory detail, kinetic motion and dialogue.
Course Materials
My Approach to teaching Writing
About the Instructor
Scott Wrobel, who has taught college English for a decade, has published work in Identity Theory, Night Train, Pindeldyboz, The Rake, Minnesota Monthly, Great River Review, and Word Riot, among other publications. He won the 2006-7 Loft Mentor Series Award in Fiction, the 2008 Third Coast Creative Nonfiction Award, and has been nominated for the Best New American Writers of 2009. He has recently finished a collection of stories about a cul de sac. Visit www.scottwrobel.com.
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*http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=8551
©Scott Wrobel, 2008
Course Address: http://www.scottwrobel.com/ADD%20Course/ADD%20Course%20Index.asp