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Sharon Plumb grew up writing stories in Cassiar, a small town in northern B.C. that no longer exists. Now she writes stories about things that exist only in her imagination. Her newest novel, Dragon Planet: Kraamlok, is an epic dragon fantasy set on another world and is suitable for upper middle grade and teen readers. Her novel Draco’s Child is for ages 13+ and also features dragons. Her picture book Bill Bruin Shovels his Roof was inspired by her father doing that very thing. Sharon also writes songs, poems, and plays. She lives in Regina.
Are your story characters as flat as the screen you’re writing on? Can’t tell them apart from the avatars on your phone? Or from each other? This workshop will teach you how to create characters so real that they’ll leap off the page. Then, use their greatest fears and desires to put them into situations that will keep you writing to find out what happens next.
“It doesn’t matter if you write horribly, as long as you edit beautifully.”
I heard this line (or one similar) from a writer at a CANSCAIP Prairie Horizons conference. It has enabled me to put words onto a page (or a screen) even when they don’t match the marvelous ones I imagine I will write. Once they are down and the ideas are all there, it is time to revise. And revise. And revise again.
This workshop is a whirlwind tour of the best advice I have received from books, workshops, and other writers on how to polish your words so they shine. I cover general editing tips, macro (big picture) and micro (detail) editing, with examples of every point and a comprehensive handout.
This workshop can be either:
In both cases, I walk the students through designing a non-human character, either a fantasy character like a dragon or space alien, or an animal like a horse or a centipede. We talk about how the non-human character is built physically, and how that impacts its interaction with the world. We also think about how such a character would communicate with a human, and vice versa.
I provide a list of activities the students can do ahead of time to get them thinking of ideas, and suggestions of how they can develop their characters further.
In this reading, I discuss how authors get ideas. I show how I got the ideas for this book by showing pictures of northern British Columbia, where the story is set. I then read the book, and ask the children to watch for the things we talked about. Afterwards, I show some illustrations that I drew for the story before the book was published, alongside the final book illustrations. The children find things that are the same and different in each pair. This leads to a discussion of expressing stories in pictures, perspective, facial expressions, details that the illustrator added, and so on.
Time permitting, I also do an interactive poem with the children and possibly read another story, asking for volunteers to act it out with props as I tell it.
In this workshop I will walk you through setting up your own WordPress website using the free software on WordPress.com. I will help you create an account, choose a theme, navigate the settings, and show you how to create your first post and page. You will need to bring:
The facility must have:
I’ve done this one at libraries, community centres, and hotels.
In this reading, I talk about the research I did while writing Draco’s Child, and how the story and the research influence each other. I talk about building my fantasy world, keeping the story believable by making a lot of it Earth-like, creating my alien characters, and designing my dragon language. I illustrate the results of my research by reading short excerpts from the book. I encourage questions all through the presentation and at the end.
myself, 2019,
Thistledown Press -out of print, 2010,
Scholastic Canada, 2006,
