Orlando Word Lab

This is a writing workshop that will focus on learning a new technique or method each month. A guest speaker will share a sample of their work and then give a writing prompt for everyone to follow.

We'll all write for 30 minutes, and then share our work with others, and receive helpful suggestions about what to improve. Bring your laptops, tablets, or notebook and pen and a willingness to learn.

This month, Erik Deckers will give a presentation on He Said, She Said: The Secrets of Writing Solid Dialogue:

Dialogue lets you illustrate themes and convey ideas through a character's verbal response to the situations and people they encounter. Without dialogue, you don't have a story, you have an essay. But writing dialogue can be quite tricky, and it's an art unto itself. You want it to sound natural, not clunky or forced. This session will teach you to share just enough information to your reader, without oversharing or having your characters act as the narrator.

Erik Deckers has been a professional writer and ghostwriter since 2009. He is the co-author of four books on social media marketing and has ghostwritten six others. He published his first humor novel, Mackinac Island Nation, in 2019. Erik has been blogging since 1997, and a newspaper humor columnist since 1994. He was the Spring 2016 writer-in-residence at the Jack Kerouac House in Orlando, FL, and is now the president of their board of directors.