Artful Prose: Crafting Pounding Sentences and Slick Layered Syntax
with Mary-Jane Holmes
And the words slide into the slots ordained by syntax and glitter as with atmospheric dust with those impurities which we call meaning. Anthony Burgess, Enderby.
The words glitter but it is the syntax that gives words the power to relate to each other in sequence, to create rhythm and emphasis and carry meaning.
In this workshop we will be exploring how we can manipulate the internal shape and pace of sentences to create particular effects. We will discuss time and flow as well as the relationship between the rhythm and the sense of the writer’s words and how through embedding tone and mood in the language’s syntactical arrangement, we can successfully steer the reader’s emotion.
Mary-Jane is chief editor at Fish Publishing Ireland, consulting editor at The Well Review, Cork, mentor at the Irish Writers Centre, Dublin and tutor at Retreat West, UK.
She has been published in such places as The Best Small Fictions Anthology 2016 and 2018, The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts, Spelk, Cabinet of Heed, Flashback Fiction, The Tishman Review, The Lonely Crowd, and Prole. She is the winner of the 2018 Mslexia Flash Fiction Competition, 2017 Bridport Poetry Prize, the Dromineer Fiction Prize amongst others. Her debut poetry collection Heliotrope with Matches and Magnifying Glass was published by Pindrop Press in 2018 and she is currently working towards a PhD in creative writing at Newcastle University, UK.
Schedule
10am - 12:30pm Morning Workshop
Announcements
1pm - 2pm Bring your own picnic lunch to share
2pm - 4:30pm Afternoon critiquing: session (if reading, 1400 words maximum or 2 poems; bring 20 copies). Fees are 20 if reading, 10 if not.**
**We are happy to announce that Mary-Jane will lead the afternoon critiquing session. Many members find these sessions to be invaluable, and this one promises to be extra special.
Sign up at genevawriters@gmail.com
Other participants are welcome!
Payments can be made online via the GWG website, or in cash on the day
