The Place of Placeby John Engell |
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How does a writer decide the amount
of emphasis, ultimately how many words, to describe the location in a short
story or novel? How should the description of place be integrated with
character development and action? These are questions a writer must consider
paragraph by paragraph, sentence by sentence, even word by word.
John is currently teaching a graduate seminar at SJSU on Bay Area fiction and creative non-fiction writers in which he notes that all of the writers came from ‘some place else’ but take great care in depicting the Bay-area setting of their works. Participants should bring two paragraphs: one describing their personal views on the place of place in their fiction, and one paragraph from their own work describing a specific place. Please limit the two paragraphs to one page total. If you wish to share these paragraphs with John before the meeting, send the paragraphs to him at John.Engell@sjsu.edu. This workshop is limited to the first fifteen participants to sign up.
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