How to Find Your Character's Voice with Jennifer Mathieu

Writespace presents How to Find Your Character's Voice with Jennifer Mathieu.

Heart-stopping plots and detailed settings are important to any memorable story, but a character who becomes real in the heart and mind of the reader leaves a permanent mark. In this three-hour workshop, we'll spend some time reading and dissecting examples of terrific character voice and complete several writing exercises intended to help develop a character whose story demands to be told.

All levels of experience are welcome.

Students will leave with a handout of exercises for uncovering a character's personality, motivations, fears, and dreams as well as a list of suggested readings.

Please bring a laptop or notepad and pen/pencil, depending on which instrument you feel most comfortable using for quick writing exercises.

Jennifer Mathieu is an English teacher and writer whose personal essays have appeared in The Washington Post, The Texas Observer, BUST, the Seal Press anthology Going Alone: Women's Adventures in the Wild, and the Dallas Museum of Art's Arts & Letters Live series.

Her first young adult novel, The Truth About Alice, was published by Roaring Brook Press/Macmillan in June 2014 and was one of ten debuts named by the American Booksellers Association to the "Indies Introduce New Voices" list.

Jennifer has a BS in Journalism from Northwestern University and a Master's in Education from the University of St. Thomas. Her favorite words are mortified, spelunking, and persnickety, and her favorite opening line to any novel is "`Where's Papa going with that axe?'" (Charlotte's Web).