Registration fee: $40 (+ GST) non-members, $30 (GST) members.

It’s a myth that scenes get written fully formed. Quite often, writing a scene involves more of a layered approach. This ensures all elements of a scene are included, which in turn helps immerse our readers in the fictional dream.
In this workshop we will do several hands-on exercises to explore:
- how to write dialogue to enhance conflict
- telling versus showing
- the importance of setting and sensory detail
- beats, and how to avoid generic gesture
- how to start and end a scene
- the importance of POV and how character changes everything
- filtering phrases and why you don’t need them
Come prepared to write—and maybe even do some improv!

Michelle Barker is an award-winning author and a senior editor with The Darling Axe. Her most recent publication, co-authored with David Brown, is Immersion and Emotion: The Two Pillars of Storytelling. Her YA historical novel My Long List of Impossible Things (Annick Press) was a Junior Library Guild gold standard selection. Michelle holds an MFA in creative writing from UBC and lives in Vancouver on the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh nations.