Join visiting author Betsy Hanson for a one-day, free manuscript editing and revising workshop. Hanson will share what she has learned about prose craft, including:
- Streamlining beginnings
- Developing “hooks” and “cliffs”
- Consistency of setting
- Timelines
- Crafting dialog that is individual to each character
- Checking for historic accuracy
- Conforming the manuscript to standard submission form
- Preparing samples for contests and grants.
- Tips for preparing to write a novel
The morning hours of this workshop will be spent covering the above revision suggestions, and the afternoon session will be devoted to taking specific questions from the writer participants, and also applying revision techniques to some pages of the participants’ manuscripts.
The workshop will take place on Saturday, September 21st, beginning at 10:30am – 2:30pm with a 30 min. lunch break. This workshop is free and open to all writers. Please pre-register with Malia Sanford (malia@lopezlibrary.org) to secure a spot in the class.
About the Instructor:
BETSY HANSON is co-translator and editor of This Kind of Woman (Stanford University Press), the first English translation of fiction by twentieth-century Japanese women writers. She wrote book reviews for The New York Times Book Review for ten years and has created a dozen short plays. In March 2018 she read her short story, All of Me, one of three winners in a short story contest sponsored by the North American Barbara Pym Society, at the group’s annual conference at Harvard Law School. Awards include a writer’s grant from The Elizabeth George Foundation, grants from the Seattle Arts Commission, and third prize for a middle-grade novel in a contest sponsored by the Pacific Northwest Writers Association. Betsy has just published her first novel, Always Gardenia, which has been featured on Nancy Pearl’s “Book Lust” webcast.
She grew up in Central Illinois and has lived in Seattle, Washington, since 1977.
Betsy will be reading from her new novel at the library on Friday, September 20th at 6:30pm.