Chalk Scribblers Workshop: After the First Draft

You’ve poured days, months, maybe years of your life into your first draft and with them, a part of your soul that you’ll never get back. Yet you also know that, lurking among all those sentences and paragraphs that you’ve nurtured into a story, there are gremlins at work.

Some of them have dug a plot hole. Some are running around in plot armour so brightly lit that it can be seen from three chapters away. Some have diverted your narrative flow to flood a quagmire of exposition. Some have erected a plot element without supporting it with the requisite foreshadowing, ready to topple over and crush a passing suspension of disbelief.

And those are just the gremlins you’ve noticed. There are probably others that are much better at camouflage. You’ll need to unleash the wrath of the critiquers to point them out.

This workshop will be a moderated discussion of how we purge a draft of its gremlins and craft it into a story fit to be allowed out in public.

The two major topics will be:

• Self editing, from the big picture elements of developmental editing via line editing to the minutiae of proofreading.
• The use of critiques, including when in the process they are likely to be useful and how to go about making best use of them.

However, that’s just the starting point. Other topics are likely to arise and demand discussion.

We anticipate having participants with a range of experience levels, from writers with several published works to beginners who are just trying to make sense of it all. Everyone is welcome because, regardless of experience level, everyone has something to contribute and a lot to learn.

Although there is no charge for the session, there is an attendee limit so if you find you can't make it, please remember to change your RSVP so someone else can take your place.