Tri-Valley Writers will host a workshop, “The Magic of Bringing Characters to Life on the Page—Secrets for Memoir and Fiction,” presented by Linda Joy Myers, founder of the National Association of Memoir Writers, and writing coach for fiction and memoir on March 16, 2024 from 1:00 – 4:30 p.m. 

NOTE: This is a workshop and therefore will run longer than normal and the meeting fee will be higher. Attendees may begin registering for this event after February 17, 2024.

We’ve all read books where we stay up late at night or read under the covers with a flashlight because we’re so engrossed in a book. We keep turning the pages to find out what happened to the characters. We are bonded to them. We feel their pain, joy, and conflicts. As writers, we wonder, and struggle, how to create vivid and emotionally strong characters in our own work.

For memoirists, we may feel reluctant to write about people we loved and/or hated, and we also struggle with creating ourselves as protagonists—we know ourselves too well. Sometimes, we don’t know ourselves well enough. In fiction, we make people up out of whole cloth—almost. It’s an art and a science to create characters that keep readers engaged in our stories. In this workshop we’re going to look at the inside/outside methods of creating characters.

We will discuss the psychology of creating characters—the inside, and the ways characters present themselves that are observable. We’ll talk about portraits of characters that include attitude, movement, desire, and dialogue. For memoir, you need to feel free to present real people you once knew as characters. In fiction, you’re free to shape and create characters, but how do you decide who they are, what they want, and how can you bear to put them through the trials that are demanded by the story?