COMMENTS FROM PARTICIPANTS
- Inventory Session
- "Maybe the most helpful part. From the moment I started filling the worksheet out, I knew I was in trouble."
- "I will use this tool for all projects."
- Plotting Sessions
- "Coming in, I had the book knowledge about plots, subplots, climax. . . but this workshop put it all into a working perspective. Something I could grab hold of. Exercises forced me to look at things I was avoiding."
- "It was a more enhanced description of plotting than I have ever seen."
- Overall Comments
- "As a whole, these exercises were brilliant because they helped me see how each aspect of novel writing connects to or is attached to the other."
- "The workbook is one of the most useful things I'll take away."
- "You made things we already knew into a tool instead of a concept."
- "I think I'll look back on this weekend as a turning point in my growth as a novelist. I wish we could do this every year!"
- "My revised chapter has moved from nice to richer, deeper, funnier. And the finest part is that I feel so empowered - like I have the tools to make my writing the writing of my dreams, the writing I love to read. It is wildly exciting."
In 1999, speaker, teacher and author Darcy Pattison created the Novel Revision Retreat to meet the needs of struggling novelists. Since then, her passionate teaching has motivated writers nationwide as she encouraged them, "I believe in your story." Her teaching has taken to events around the nation: Hawaii, California, Washington, Arizona, Michigan, Georgia, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Illinois, Iowa, Louisiana and many other places. Her blog, Fiction Notes, which gives writing tips and discusses writing techniques, receives over 100,000 visitors per year.
Kirby Larson (www.kirbylarson.com), author of Hattie Big Sky, winner of the 2007 Newbery Honor Book Award (the highest award given to children's novels by the American Library Association). Kirby had been writing for nearly 20 years and had published four chapter books and a picture book before writing, and revising, Hattie Big Sky (Delacorte). This story sold in ten-days-flat to the first editor who saw it.
"I found many books useful, but I found your NOVEL METAMORPHOSIS absolutely the best for a workshop. For the first time in 18 years of doing The Manuscript Workshop in Vermont, I offered one this year for novels - for those who had a first draft or more that needed revision. The most interesting session was the one where we dealt with the Shrunken Manuscript, and we were all really impressed about how much we learned from this hands on activity."
Barbara Seuling, Director