FREE Professional Writing Course

THE WRITER'S NICHE
Nadene R. Carter

HOW THIS WORKSHOP CAME TO BE

How This Workshop Came To Be
I provide this Workshop for Writers to give back to others the help and encouragement provided to me by numerous writing mentors. As a young mother with small children I wished I could find someone with whom I could feel comfortable to ask questions about writing. Keep in mind, those years were BI – Before the Internet and before the publication of ‘how to’ books on writing. In some ways I envy beginning writers today. They have so much information just a mouse click away, but all that information has a downside: It can be overwhelming. For the beginning writer, whether adult or youth, my Workshop provides a solid path to your goal of becoming a writer.

A writer doesn’t achieve his/her goal of "being published" by living in a vacuum. We are all influenced by the people who make an imprint on our lives. In that same vein, the books we read leave their mark on us as well.

I was fortunate as a youth to have been befriended by a librarian who sparked my interest in books and in analyzing their content. Likewise, the books I read planted the seed that someday I wanted to be a writer. As a young girl, Jo in Little Women was my hero. I still own the tattered 1929 copy of that novel. My all-time favorite is To Kill a Mockingbird. Girl of the Limberlost and The Boxcar Children were also favorites, as was Nancy Drew, and I read every book in that series. Even today, my reading of choice is suspense.

Still, for years my interest in writing fiction languished. Life got in the way as it does for all of us raising families, earning a living, and being contributing members of a community. Interestingly, my work outside the home always revolved around ‘words’. In one position I was even known as ‘Ms. Grammar’.

Regardless of the demands life exacted upon me, I managed to find time to read. It’s amazing what you can assimilate by reading in a genre that interests you. It happens almost by osmosis—a transfer from the page to your brain as to how that genre is ‘put together’.

As the demands on my time grew less, I invested in books on writing. Instinctively, I understood that ‘writing a novel’ involved a whole cluster of topics:

► creating characters,

► writing believable dialogue,

► understanding point of view, and

► creating action and suspense, to name a few.

I studied those books with pen and highlighter in hand. Important things I typed out. Anything to get the information from the page into my head.

The more I studied, the more questions surfaced:

► Where does one look for story ideas?

► How does one structure the story?

► What is meant by the "character arc"?

► How does one create story conflict?

► How does one develop a theme?

After much study, I felt that I possessed a rudimentary, though incomplete, knowledge of the various aspects of the ‘craft of writing’. Next, I read and outlined several modern-day novels to see how various authors structured their stories, how they handled dialogue, and when they used narrative instead of dialogue and why.

That exercise produced enough answers that I felt able to take those first tentative steps toward writing a novel.

I can help you take those steps!