Workshop Your WIP!

We are holding an informal (virtual) meeting this month, with no presenter. We’ll be breaking into small groups to “workshop” the aspects of our works-in-progress (manuscript, blurb, etc.) that we’re struggling with or that are stymieing us. Sometimes talking these issues through with supportive writer friends and colleagues can help us figure out how to solve them. Or, if you don’t feel like workshopping anything, you can hang out and socialize while others are in the breakout rooms.

Please note that NECRWA meetings are online.

Make Your Protagonist’s Job Work for YOU!

Our work shapes us.

Whether your protagonist is a scientist, a homemaker, a fast food worker, or a demon hunter, they spend countless hours every week working and thinking about work, and they have for most of their life. If you take the time to really think about how your protagonist’s profession affects their personality and worldview, you’ll see the results in the added depth, naturalism, and uniqueness of your characterization.

In this workshop, you’ll have a chance to partner up and create a character together! Then I guide the group through a series of interactive exercises and brainstorming sessions. You’ll use the character’s job as a lense to build characterization, covering everything from job skills and the economic nitty-gritty to deep POV and story structure.

Please note that NECRWA meetings are online.

BIO: Rose Lerner discovered historical romance when she was thirteen, and tried her hand at writing one a few years later. Her writing has improved since then, but her fascination with all things Regency hasn’t changed. Rose is a tour guide by day (at least, she was before lockdown…), and by night she writes romance! Her protagonists include a chemist, an innkeeper, an army officer, a con artist, a valet, a maid-of-all-work, and a confectioner. Books in her small-town Lively St. Lemeston series have been featured in NPR’s Book Concierge and Publishers Weekly’s Best Books of 2014. Visit RoseLerner.com to find out more. (Rose also freelances as a book doctor, editor, and research assistant at RoseDoesTheResearch.com, helping authors tap into their creativity and realize the full potential of their ideas!)

“Writing fiction is the act of weaving a series of lies to arrive at a greater truth.” –Khaled Hosseini

Fiction may be little white lies for some but characters are real. A story may get over when you reach THE END but characters have the power to live in our hearts, minds and leap off the page and into our lives.

Join fiction author and international freelance journalist, Anju Gattani, in a power-packed workshop (complete with handouts) as she dissects character archetypes and deep-dives into the different dimensions of your characters. Anju will explore how to make your protagonists and villains sparkle on the page, amp up the tension and drive story forward. Join Anju as she summons protagonists to THE END so you can lead them toward THE BEGINNING of a sequel or series.

Please note that NECRWA meetings are online.

BIO: A fiction author, freelance journalist, fiction writing instructor, blogger and former newspaper reporter, Anju was born in India but grew up in Hong Kong. She has also lived and been published in Singapore, India, Australia, New Jersey, Connecticut, and finally dug her roots in Atlanta, Georgia, USA, with her husband, 2 dashing boys and a rebel lion-head rabbit. Anju has been published in cover stories, fiction, feature, news, interviews, travel, perspective pieces and more.

‘Duty and Desire’ the debut in her Winds of Fire series, is slated for release on June 2, 2020. Anju hopes her books will Bridge Cultures and Break Barriers.

Anju Gattani website