GCC Creative Writing

So, you’ve built a character. You gave it cool clothes (turtle-neck, yoga pants) and a favorite whiskey (Wild Turkey) and deep, soulful eyes anyone could drown in (blue, naturally). You gave it a history too, filled with pain, regret, shame, and other abstractions. Oh, and maybe it used to fold clothes for Old Navy or bartend at that one Applebee’s–you remember, the one that nearly burned down because of poor deep-fryer maintenance. You gave your character a complex intellect and a deep appreciation for philosophical thought because, you know, that’s useful. But, see, now all the character does is wallow in a bathtub, breaking down the chemical structure of Pantene Pro-V and debating the authenticity of modern marketing’s practice of assigning gender to body washes and anti-aging cream. Who doesn’t want to feel the gentle caress of shea butter? Bask in the scent of champagne mango and white ginger?

Probably no one, but that’s beside the point. The point, if you’ve made it this far, is that narratives need characters that do things. In this workshop, we’ll dive into that further. We’ll talk about how terms like plot and conflict interconnect, discuss how you can affect the pace of a story by generating conflict in a variety of ways, and look at different strategies for injecting conflict into your narratives.

The Out of the Bathtub workshop will be conducted by Jeff Baker, one of the English Faculty at GCC.

• When: Saturday, April 9th at 10:00AM (the workshop will run between 90 and 120 minutes)
• Where: GCC Main Campus, LA-141
• Why: Because Jeff Really Needs This

This will be the final Saturday Workshop for the Spring semester, so we hope to see you there. Bring your friends, your aunts and uncles, your neighbors, your fitness instructors, and any random people you meet on Saturday mornings.