The best way to grow as a writer is to read often and widely, and you can plan to do both in this course. Here, you’ll be asked to suspend your disbelief as we look to fiction’s first and oldest teacher to show us the ways of storytelling: narrative poetry.
In this course, we’ll be focusing on three important elements to writing better narratives: characterization, pacing, and emotion. Together, we’ll read several narrative poems that encapsulate these elements and use them as talisman texts to inform our own writing.
We’ll look at how intentional language can be used to characterize both characters and setting. We’ll examine the collapse of time and nonlinearity that poetry allows for and brainstorm how we can apply this to our own work to produce new and innovative stories. We’ll also meditate on how narrative poetry keeps readers engaged emotionally and how we can incorporate this into our own writing. There will be prompts that encourage you to generate new work as well as approach old work with a new angle. No poetry experience is necessary for this course.
CUSTOMER BENEFITS/TAKEAWAYS:
- Read a selection of narrative poems they can keep and continue to learn from
- Learn how to read poetry critically to use it as an educational tool
- Practice approaching narrative from new angles
- Learn how to characterize setting and characters through intentional language
- Experiment with the collapse of time and nonlinearity in their work
- Learn how to keep readers engaged emotionally
- Widen their perspectives of what a narrative can be and include
INSTRUCTOR BIO:
Veronica Mattaboni is a poet, editor, and writing coach living in Pennsylvania. She holds a BA in Writing and an MFA in Creative Writing, specializing in Poetry. Her work has been featured in: Menacing Hedge, The Offing, PASTEL Magazine, Passaic / Völuspá, and Penn and Anvil Press, home of her chapbook Swing All The Way Up And Smack. Veronica is a Pushcart Prize Nominee, Best of the Net Nominee, and the Editor in Chief of Peach Velvet Mag, a theme-based literary magazine based in the West Chester/Philadelphia area.
Website: www.peachvelvetmag.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/veronica.mattaboni
Instagram: @whatdarkpassages