Creativity Rules!
A Workshop For Writers
prepared and presented by John Vorhaus
PART ONE: CREATIVITY
GOOD WRITING
- What is good writing?
- The union of honesty and style
- The residual benefit of all writing
- All creative problems are divisible by two
- A good writing exercise
BAD WRITING
- What is bad writing?
- The self-negating prophecy of bad writing
- Platform thinking
- Stating and solving the problem
- A bad writing exercise
RECORDING REALITY
- The arbitrary choice
- Levels of detail
- Physical, emotional and relational reality
- Delving into detail
FILTERS
- Filters define characters
- Types of filters
- Sums of filters
- Three primary filters
- Character construction through filters
STORY
- The function of story
- The relationship of story to theme
- Snapshot storytelling
- The detail trap
THE TRANSFORMATIONAL TEMPLATE
- Why transformational stories?
- Pre-existing condition
- Change bomb
- The pressure-response piston
- Boom
- Brink
- The blessed beyond
PART TWO: RULES!
HOW TO INVENT NEW WORDS
- Language as code
- Writer as custodian of language
- Rules and reality
- Strategies for inventing new words
- Your evolving vocabulary
THE WRITER'S LIFE
- Who makes the rules?
- The writer as talker
- Special knowledge
- The practice of writing
- Enemies and allies
- Your job list
GAMES
- Search and destroy
- soundOUBTS
- True fact/bar fact
- 800 roulette
- Good verbrations
- Any questions?
WRITER'S BLOCK BUSTING
- What is writer's block?
- Fear of bad outcomes
- Lack of information
- Strategies for busting writer's block
- Your writer's block snapshot
AND BEYOND
- Why writers write
- Platform thinking revisited
- Relentless pursuit of the paradigm shift
- In sum
- Q & A