writing intensive in nyc

PLEASURE AND RISK: Testing the Limits
a weekend writing intensive with Brooke Berman and Karen Hartman

Explore pleasure and risk-taking (and the pleasure of risk-taking) in this two day exploration of what lives at the edges of your own writing.

Saturday August 8th and Sunday August 9th
1-6 pm both days
Art New York - 520 8th Avenue b/w 36th and 37th

What is more delicious, safety or breaking boundaries? This workshop will help you figure out what is SAFE, how to make a haven for yourself as an artist. We will also approach what is UNSAFE, how to move beyond individual boundaries and "limits" to create work at a new level.

Both instructors will be present the entire time, with lots of writing ideas and exercises, and opportunity to share work as well.

$250 for the weekend.

Limited space, write to Brooke and Karen at karensworkshop@gmail.com
with questions or to reserve.

Who We Are:

BROOKE BERMAN's plays have been produced and workshopped across the US and in London. She is a two-time recipient of both the Francesca Primus and Lecompte du Nouy awards; she is a recipient of a Berilla Kerr Award, a Helen Merrill Award, and a commissioning grant from the National Foundation for Jewish Culture for the play Until We Find Each Other, which was produced at Steppenwolf in 2002, directed by Anna D. Shapiro. Brooke’s play Hunting and Gathering premiered at Primary Stages, directed by Leigh Silverman, and was named one of the Ten Best of 2008 by New York Magazine. Her memoir, NO PLACE LIKE HOME, will be published by Random House in July, 2010. Brooke is also a screenwriter whose credits include the short ALL SAINTS DAY (directed by Will Frears), MAJOR MINOR DETAILS (the Mark Gordon Company), DISOBEDIENCE (Vox films), and an adaptation of her play SMASHING. Brooke has taught playwriting and creative writing as a guest artist in the New York City public school system, at assorted colleges, as well as privately to adults and through the “24 With 5 Teaching Collective” which she co-created at New Dramatists with Karen Hartman, Lynn Nottage, Jorge Cortinas and Dominick Taylor.

KAREN HARTMAN has taught playwriting for years at the Yale School of Drama, Yale University, Bennington College, and other universities and New York companies. She is the author of Gum, Leah’s Train, Goliath (Dorothy Silver New Play Prize), Going Gone (N.E.A. New Play Grant); Anatomy 1968; Girl Under Grain (Best Drama in NY Fringe; ALICE: Tales of a Curious Girl (Music by Gina Leishman, AT&T Onstage Award); Troy Women; Donna Wants, Goldie, Max, and Milk; Sea Change, a musical with AnnMarie Milazzo, and MotherBone, an opera with Graham Reynolds. Her plays have been performed in New York at the Women’s Project, NAATCO, P73, the NY Fringe, and Summer Play Festival, and at regional theaters including Center Stage, Cincinnati Playhouse, the Magic Theater, Dallas Theater Center, and elsewhere. She was awarded new play commissions from ACT in San Francisco, McCarter Theater, La Jolla Playhouse, South Coast Repertory, and others. Her work is published by Theater Communications Group, Dramatists Play Service, Playscripts, Backstage Books, and NoPassport Press. An alumna of New Dramatists and Yale (B.A., M.F.A.), Karen has received playwriting support from Rockefeller Foundation at Bellagio, the N.E.A., the Helen Merrill Foundation, a Daryl Roth "Creative Spirit" Award, a Hodder Fellowship, a Jerome Fellowship, a Fulbright Scholarship to Jerusalem, and Core Membership at the Playwrights Center.

poetry for character development

Once again, we experiment with brevity in order to cut to the core of our characters and their desires. What happens if your characters have to sum up their entire story in the form of a haiku? What do you learn? What do you miss? What do you wish you could still say? What do you not need?

DAILY CREATIVE EXERCISE:

Poetic Form: Haiku

Using the traditional Japanese haiku, a three-line poem with seventeen syllables, write in a 5/7/5 syllable count. Often haikus focus on images from nature and emphasize simplicity, intensity, and directness of expression.

5
7
5

poetry for character development 7

Your characters have suffered loss at some point in their lives. They've lost a parent, they've lost a love affair, they've lost a job, they've lost a loved pet.

Maybe they are currently in the process of deciding to break up. Maybe they were just dumped. Maybe they have not yet made any decisions and are weighing all the risks.

Whatever the circumstances, have your lead character speak to you in an Elegy to fill you in on the details of that particular loss. If your lead character is untouched by loss, then explore a supporting character to find out how a specific loss has informed their current pattern of behavior.

DAILY CREATIVE EXERCISE:

Poetic Form: Elegy

Elegy mirrors three stages of loss. First, there is a lament, where the speaker expresses grief and sorrow, then praise and admiration, and finally consolation and solace.

Elegy on Toy Piano
by Dean Young

For Kenneth Koch

You don't need a pony
to connect you to the unseeable
or an airplane to connect you to the sky.

Necessary it is to love to live
and there are many manuals
but in all important ways
one is on one's own.

You need not cut off your hand.
No need to eat a bouquet.
Your head becomes a peach pit.
Your tongue a honeycomb.

Necessary it is to live to love,
to charge into the burning tower
then charge back out
and necessary it is to die.
Even for the trees, even for the pony
connecting you to what can't be grasped.

The injured gazelle falls behind the
herd. One last wild enjambment.

Because of the sores in his mouth,
the great poet struggles with a dumpling.
His work has enlarged the world
but the world is about to stop including him.
He is the tower the world runs out of.

When something becomes ash,
there's nothing you can do to turn it back.
About this, even diamonds do not lie.

poetry for character development 6

Your characters have points of view about specific issues in their lives, in their larger community, their family and in the world. Everyone argues - no matter how saintly - even if they won't have that argument aloud, they have it in their head. Everyone has their idea of how to solve a problem - sometimes the solution benefits them personally, sometimes it benefits everyone.

How does character approach problem solving? How do they argue? Do they always have to win? Do they think of others or just themself?

DAILY CREATIVE EXERCISE:

WRITE A BOP

The Bop is a form of poetic argument consisting of three stanzas, each stanza followed by a repeated line, or refrain, and each undertaking a different purpose in the overall argument of the poem.

The first stanza (six lines long) states the problem, and the second stanza (eight lines long) explores or expands upon the problem. If there is a resolution to the problem, the third stanza (six lines long) finds it. If a substantive resolution cannot be made, then this final stanza documents the attempt and failure to succeed.

Have your lead character use this form to explain a current problem in their life and how they plan to resolve it. Then write another poem from the perspective of the person creating that problem for your lead.

Steal the form from the poem below for structure.

Bop: Haunting
By Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon

In the evening she comes, her same unsatisfied self,
with the hard, smug look of salvation. Mama,
stop bothering me. When we argue, she says
what you’re saying is not scriptural.
You need to get back in your Bible.

In one dream, I slap her. I’m tired of her mouth.

I hate to see the evening
Sun go down

Yesterday, I dreamed a vampire
held my wrist, dared me to wake
to her, corporeal, stolid. Mama,
was that you? I refused to touch
her body in the casket.
At the gravesite I refused everything
but dry-eyed silence,
her picture in my hand.

I hate to see the evening
Sun go down

This is what I get for conjuring—
Mama, after me all night,
fussing about the holy ghost
when what I need is sleep.
But last night I lay dreamless.
I didn’t sleep sound.

I hate to see the evening
Sun go down

using poetry for character development 5

Forcing our characters to keep their thoughts succinct, brief, helps to solidify exactly what is important to them. It cuts to the core of their motivations and desires.

DAILY CREATIVE EXERCISE:

WRITE A TANKA

Tanka is an ancient form of Japanese poetry believed to exist for the last 1300 years which makes it older than haiku. As a form, the tanka poem consists of 31 syllables arranged in a metric pattern of 5 – 7 – 5 – 7 – 7.

In Japanese, tanka is written in one straight line with no stresses and no rhyme scheme though the sounds and words are meant to resonate emotionally as in contemporary American free verse.

In English, we usually divide the lines into the five syllabic units:

5
7
5
7
7

Use this form to explore the driving motivation behind all of your characters actions. You can choose a theme such as OBSESSION or LOSS and have each of your characters write a tanka to express their "take" on it.

Use the below poems as a guide for structure and form. Tankas often deal with how nature is reflective of our inner emotional states. How a tree can symbolize our own growth, how the weather express our moods. Let your characters grow nostalgic, self-reflective. Let them wallow a bit.

Lying alone
my black hair tangled
uncombed,
I long for the one
who touched it first.

-- IZUMI SHIKIBU

Did he appear
because I fell asleep
thinking of him?
If only I'd known I was dreaming,
I'd never have wakened.

-- ONO NO KOMACHI

poetry for character development 4

I find it is unusually helpful to have a character of the play tell me the entire story of the play from their perspective. They only see the plot elements that directly impact their lives. They don't know the underlying motivations of the other characters or they may have STRONG opinions about how things SHOULD be happening.

A great way to get this information out of your characters is a story poem.

DAILY CREATIVE EXERCISE:

WRITE A STORY POEM

To get started on a story poem, begin by quickly writing down a sequence of events that happens to one of your supporting characters, from beginning to end. USE THEIR VOICE - NOT YOURS! You might be surprised how a peripheral character knows so much about your structure and plot!

You may want to write this out first as prose, then add line breaks and stanza breaks when you complete your first draft. Or you may choose to mimic the structure and form of the poem below to give yourself a road map.

Whatever you do, just write.

TOMATOES
- by Stephen Dobyns -

A woman travels to Brazil for plastic
surgery and a face-lift. She is sixty
and has the usual desire to stay pretty.
Once she is healed, she takes her new face
out on the streets of Rio. A young man
with a gun wants her money. Bang, she’s dead.
The body is shipped back to New York,
but in the morgue there is a mix-up. The son
is sent for. He is told that his mother
is one of these ten different women.
Each has been shot. Such is modern life.
He studies them all but can’t find her.
With her new face, she has become a stranger.
Maybe it’s this one, maybe it’s that one.
He looks at their breasts. Which ones nursed him?
He presses their hands to his cheek.
Which ones consoled him? He even tries
climbing onto their laps to see which
feels most familiar but the coroner stops him.
Well, says the coroner, which is your mother?
They all are, says the young man, let me
take them as a package. The coroner hesitates,
then agrees. Actually, it solved a lot of problems.
The young man has the ten women shipped home,
then cremates them all together. You’ve seen
how some people have a little urn on the mantel?
This man has a huge silver garbage can.
In the spring, he drags the garbage can
out to the garden and begins working the teeth,
the ash, the bits of bone into the soil.
Then he plants tomatoes. His mother loved tomatoes.
They grow straight from seed, so fast and big
that the young man is amazed. He takes the first
ten into the kitchen. In their roundness,
he sees his mother’s breasts. In their smoothness
he finds the consoling touch of her hands.
Mother, mother, he cries, and flings himself
on the tomatoes. Forget about the knife, the fork,
the pinch of salt. Try to imagine the filial
starvation, think of his ravenous kisses.

poetry for character development 3

Your characters have a way that they do things that may be a very different approach than you would take as a person yourself or as a writer trying to fix script issues. Sometimes, it's best to get out of the way and let them fix the problems themselves.

DAILY CREATIVE EXERCISE

WRITE A "HOW TO" POEM
In the voice of your lead character, address an obstacle blocking your lead from getting what they want. Maybe your lead wants to seduce his/her lover. Write a "how to seduce" poem in their voice. Maybe your lead wants to kill his/her enemy. Write a "how to get rid of so-and-so" poem.

Use the form and structure of the below poem as your guide.

How to See Deer
by Philip Booth

Forget roadside crossings.
Go nowhere with guns.
Go elsewhere your own way,

lonely and wanting. Or
stay and be early:
next to deep woods

Inhabit old orchards.
All clearings promise.
Sunrise is good,

and fog before sun.
Expect nothing always;
find your luck slowly.

Wait out the windfall.
Take your good time
to learn to read ferns;

make like a turtle:
downhill toward slow water.
Instructed by heron,

drink the pure silence.
Be compassed by wind.
If you quiver like aspen

trust your quick nature:
let your ear teach you
which way to listen.

You've come to assume
protective color; now
colors reform to

new shapes in your eye.
You've learned by now
to wait without waiting;

as if it were dusk
look into light falling:
in deep relief

things even out. Be
careless of nothing. See
what you see.

using poetry for character development 2

Your characters often know alot more about each other than you know as the writer. Often, when we allow them to speak about the people that surround them (without the confining walls of our current project) we discover that they have juicy details and hidden secrets they need to share.

Poetry takes us out of our comfort zone and allows us to play for just a moment and hopefully, trip on new information.

DAILY CREATIVE EXERCISE:

Write a One-Sentence Poem

Write a poem that is atleast six to twelve lines long and contains only one sentence. Write this poem in the voice of your lead character talking about their enemy and/or lover and the topic is jealousy.

Use this poem as an example of the form but feel free to run longer.

The New Dog
by Linda Pastan

Into the gravity of my life,
the serious ceremonies
of polish and paper
and pen, has come

this manic animal
whose innocent disruptions
make nonsense
of my old simplicities—

as if I needed him
to prove again that after
all the careful planning,
anything can happen.

using poetry to create character

My weekly writing group most recently began using poetry to create raw material for other written work such as plays, screenplays, etc. This is a method I've used many times to discover my characters, uncover plot and to further examine the relationships between my lead character and his/her enemy or lover.

Often, my poems end up as monologues or as scenes within a play. The poem itself gets transposed into dialogue, which helps heighten the style and language of the piece without any "effort" - very often a poem can tell a writer, in so few words, what the essence of a scene actually is. It "cuts to the quick" and resonates with emotional truth.

Poetry creates the "aha" moment - which always leads to good drama.

DAILY CREATIVE EXERCISE:

"WRITE A PHOTOGRAPH"

Write a poem that captures your character like a photograph. See them in a specific fleeting moment. See them as another character saw them. Freeze that image in time. Flesh out the specifics, explore the details.

Use this poem as your inspiration. Steal its structure and make it your own. Copy the form or reject the tone. Use this poem as a launching pad for your own exploration.

Grammar
by Tony Hoagland

Maxine, back from a weekend with her boyfriend,
smiles like a big cat and says
that she's a conjugated verb.
She's been doing the direct object
with a second person pronoun named Phil,
and when she walks into the room,
everybody turns:

some kind of light is coming from her head.
Even the geraniums look curious,
and the bees, if they were here, would buzz
suspiciously around her hair, looking
for the door in her corona.
We're all attracted to the perfume
of fermenting joy,

we've all tried to start a fire,
and one day maybe it will blaze up on its own.
In the meantime, she is the one today among us
most able to bear the idea of her own beauty,
and when we see it, what we do is natural:
we take our burned hands
out of our pockets,
and clap.

12 new chapters or scenes - in one hour

Okay, maybe that's overselling this idea a bit but I still believe you can create 12 new chapter ideas or scene moments in an hour and here's how.

DAILY CREATIVITY EXERCISE

Work with a character you know very well. Maybe it's a character from your new play, in a novel you're trying to finish or a short story - maybe it's a character that's been walking around in your brain and hasn't yet made it to the page. Just focus on that one character. Give yourself a few quiet minutes to think about the character in depth.

Write these prompts on slips of paper (or make up your own):

Name of your character...

...is standing in a doorway
...is involved in a ceremony
...is wounded
...finds out something he/she is not supposed to know
...writes a letter
...discovers the contents of someone's closet
...does a forbidden activity
...gets up in the morning
...kisses
...finds his/her way through a city
...deals with his/her hair
...sees a shooting star
...breaks a promise
...visits a fortune teller
...gets caught in the act
...in a grocery store
...falls from grace
...is injured
...gives someone a present
...attends a dinner party
...has an epiphany
...asks for mercy
...walks in the back yard

Put these slips in an envelope and shake them up. Get a timer. Give yourself five minutes for each scene/chapter. Pull a slip from the envelope and make your character take that action.

Write as quickly as you can explaining why that action was taken, how the character got there, why they did what they did, who was with them, what was around them, when it happened, where the event took place, etc.

Write for the full 5 minutes. Don't stop. As soon as the timer dings, pull a slip and do it again.

You can write for a full hour and that should give you 12 new scene/chapter beginnings or you can write until your hand cramps and get as many as you can stand.

PICK UP YOUR PEN AND GET STARTED!!

dear abby letter part three

You've done your "problem" letter and your Dear Abby "response" letter. Now it's time to write your "follow-up" letter. This will let you know how things ended up for your character.

DAILY CREATIVITY EXERCISE:

Reread the Dear Abby response letter. Take a moment to visualize your character taking her advice. How would his/her life change? How would their behaviour change?

Now, give yourself 10 minutes to write a "follow-up" letter in the voice of your character to Dear Abby. Pretend that six months has passed and you're writing to thank her for the advice and tell her what happened in these last months with the changes you made - the changes she suggested. What were the results? How did other people respond to these changes?

Write for the full 10 minutes. Don't stop - just let your hand keep moving across the page. See what happens.