NINC Conference- Butler workshop

As I posted before, the Novelists, Inc. conference in New Orleans was really great and I highly recommend the organization itself as well as the weekend retreat.

The all-day workshop was given by Pulitzer-prize winning auhtor Robert Olen Butler. He made it very clear that he writes literature, not 'entertainment fiction', however the workshop was still worthwhile. The best things I got from his workshop were:

1- Sensual selectivity: adding details to a scene that actually mean something, not just describe the setting. What the character is feeling should dictate the details they notice and reinforce the character's emotions for the reader. This realy resonated with me and rang so true. I think in a highly emotional moment we've all become transfixed by a frayed shirt cuff or carpet stain.

2- Thrum vs Twang: as a way of knowing instinctively when the words on the page flow like music from that white hot center as opposed to falling out of your head

3- Dreamstorming- It was nice to finally have a name for an in-place process [that looks like taking a nap to my husband]. Butler claims this form of pre-creating the novel can be used by pantsers or plotters. Basically you free associate in your head/ dream the scenes without trying to control or direct them. Then you jot a one sentence scene title on an index card and shuffle them into a plot. [For more detailed information on this, see my 2003 article S.C.A.M.P.E.R ]

4- Being in the Moment- Butler encouraged us not to avert our eyes, to break through the unconscious into what is authentic and to keep a Sense Space Journal. This is a 15 day diary in which every morning you write about something that happened the day before. But you only write the moment to meoment sensory perceptions, without explanation, adding context, summary, analysis or interpretation. The end result to supposed to be that we write from the character's sensibility and not from their head or our own.

All in all, not a great workshop while experiencing it, but I did end up getting a lot out of it. I'm going to read his book, FROM WHERE WE DREAM, which goes into the same topics in more depth and see what else I get.