Tag Archives: writing exercises

Write without worry – OUT OF OUR MINDS workshop

by

1

Do you have a story or several roiling inside you, aching to be unleashed on the world? Do you watch the chest-burster scene in Alien and think “Yeah, I get that”?

Want to share your thoughts but terrified that you’ll suck at it? Already writing, but want to explore deeper characters, more evocative description, and more intense action? Interested in translating your performance arts to the page?

OUT OF OUR MINDS (& onto the page) is the perfect workshop to get those creative juices flowing. Over 5 Saturdays at SoCap Comedy Theatre (May 16 – Jun 13), we’ll play with improv games and prompted writing exercises to help you make writing spontaneous and freewheeling. Thinking is overthinking, so we’re going to remove the pressure to get it right by simply playing with whatever comes. No preparation. No homework. No inhibitions.

Just be ready to be silly and open. Oh, and bring something to write with (e.g., pen & paper, phone, iPad, stone tablet & chisel, semaphore flags).

TO REGISTER: Early-bird pricing of $175 (+ HST) ends April 12 when prices rise to $225 (+HST). Please send an e-transfer to createdbyrcw@gmail.com to reserve your place. Spaces are limited.

ABOUT THE INSTRUCTOR:

Randall C Willis is an award-winning screen and comedy writer and filmmaker, and he regularly performs in Toronto’s spoken-word storytelling community. He is also a seasoned science and medicine writer, but hey, nobody’s perfect.

Randall teaches screenwriting at Toronto’s George Brown Polytechnic and through his company So, What’s Your Story?, this storytelling evangelist helps clients bring life to their visions and breath to their unique voices. He also routinely judges screenplays and films for festivals across North America, including Toronto Chinese Canadian Film Festival, Lunenburg Doc Fest, and Austin Film Festival.

A perpetual student of the storytelling craft and arts, Randall has 25+ years of training in improv, stand up, puppetry, sketch comedy, advertising and publishing. He also writes a killer eulogy. If Randall has a motto, it’s “You have permission to suck”, which fits nicely with his fully improvised life.

Learn more about Randall’s approach to creativity and his style via his YouTube channel.

Picture this

by

0

A new way to write?

A new way to write?

So, it would appear that somewhen in the recent past, I made a transition in my writing. As I was working with a friend and colleague the other day on a novel we’re writing, I realized that something significant had changed.

I no longer write in words. I now write in pictures.

This is not to say that I have become an animator or that my writing implement of choice is a paint brush or crayon (nothing wrong with those choices) but rather that when I imagine a scene in my head, I no longer think to describe it in words but literally as visuals.

This may not sound like much to you, but for me—who has long held myself to be a wordsmith, first and foremost—it is huge.

For quite some time, I have been taking screenwriting classes, and the one comment that has been made consistently throughout that time is that I write like a novelist. I have mentioned before my affinity for narrative and my need to describe a scene to within a literal inch of its setting. Well, it would appear that in trying to break myself of the verbosity, I have swung all the way into pictures, leaving words in my dust.

For the case in point, I was trying to describe to my colleague how we might open the novel at the end of our story and then transition from one event at the end to a metaphorically similar point at the beginning of the story, which all sounded great until I tried to put that down on paper.

I managed to cobble together some verbiage that roughly describes what I saw, but I know it will take some time to effectively capture the visual in words…time I am more than happy to put in. But it rocked me to realize that I no longer saw things the same way.

Oh, my God. You don’t think… Nah, couldn’t be. I’m still working on being a writer.

Dear God, please don’t tell me, I’m thinking about become a… ugh, I can’t say it… a… a… director!

Anyone have a beret and megaphone I could borrow?

directors-chair

(Images are property of owners and used here without permission because that is Legal’s problem.)