It’s all arranged: I will now be giving a free two-hour workshop on characterization in tandem with my book signing in Sandy on September 3rd.   For those who don’t know, the event is being held at the Sandy Barnes and Noble (10180 S. State) from 6:00 – 9:00 (ending one hour later than was originally planned). Here’s the way the evening will work.  From 6:00 to 7:00 I’ll spend time signing Green Dragon Codex, answering questions, and chatting with people.  Then at 7:00 the workshop will begin, and it will end around 9:00.  (Though I don’t mind staying later to work with people, unless the B&N people grow irritated with us and kick us out.)

The workshop will be on characterization and how to make our writing do triple-duty work, meaning how to make every page engrossing by avoiding blocks of anything—especially exposition, but any other single element of narrative delivered in large chunks is dangerous, too.  The workshop will be on ways to make every page we write serve multiple purposes at once, thus making the story more interesting.  I’ve only done this workshop one time before and was very dissatisfied with it (at World Horror Con earlier this year).  Feedback was very positive, but I only had one hour for the workshop then and that simply wasn’t enough.  This workshop takes a lot of interaction and hands on exchange between writers and myself, and writers and other writers.  So I’m really looking forward to getting a chance to do the workshop with as much time as I need to do it justice. 

I hope to see plenty of people there.  It isn’t often that an intensive event like this is offered for free (I wish I could do that more often), so if you can possibly make it, do.  Also, please tell friends and other writers who you think may be interested.  I promise, the content we’ll cover will be well worth the time.