Writer Conference continued

As promised here is more from the Writers conference I attended. 

Pam Houston said "Don't waste the reader's time." Compress your piece as tight as possible. 

Her advice on dialogue (and note this is her own experience and advice) 
* Use dialogue to show character.
* Use Dialogue to create tension.

She said that your agenda should be to engage the reader by keeping dialogue on the verge of understanding. Every relationship has its own dialogue rules. Couples speak differently to each other than they do to family or close friends. 

This distinction should be made in your writing. For example people who have been married for five years will have baggage in their dialogue- hence fighting over toilet paper, when really they are fighting over some underlying meaning- something different than what they say. This is the kind of tension dialogue should strive for. 

Another writing exercise she gave was to create a story that is compromised of a list in some way.

I will be reading one of her books and writing a review on this blog for it in a couple of weeks- be on the watch for it.

Happy writing!

Writing Conference Notes

Here is the great thing I wanted to share with everyone from the writers Conference I took a few weekends ago. 

I took a fiction class with Wyoming Writer Pam Houston. She had some very interesting advice to give and now I will impart this advice and fun upon my readers today and Wednesday.


 Houston gave a couple writing exercises to do. The first is her very own personal way of managing her writing and how she puts things together. Her way is called Glimmers.

Glimmers are short little moments in time taken from real life. You write a few sentences to a paragraph down from something that happened to you giving as much sensory as possible so you capture what has happened.

 The point is to make it condensed as possible (which comes into play later) and to capture something from real life that you can apply to either fiction or nonfiction.

 Here is one of mine for an example.

~ I bent down on 1 knee in the middle of Burger King to ask my boy friend to marry me. My left leg went to sleep and the tingling sensation of hyperventilation followed up my left side straight into the hand with the gold band as I popped the question~

 See very simple and according to Houston, you take anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour to write them all down. You are not supposed to edit as you go. The point is to catch the moment on paper or word pad- you can edit later when you want to use it in something.


Your assignment- with Houston's permission to use it- is to take 15 minutes and write three of your own glimmers. One from the last 72 hrs, one from 10 years ago, and one from anytime you would like.

 Tell me how it went in the comments as I'm very curious to see all of your reactions to this kind of exercise.


I'll be back on Wednesday to give you more from this conference enjoy!