As a memoir or essay writer, you are both the narrator telling the storyâguiding the reader through scenes, reflections, and takeawaysâand a character in the story, often the protagonist. The version of you on the page can be a curated self, known as a persona. Not only does persona allow you to take control of your narrative, it enables you to think carefully about both sentence and character-level craft intentionally and without overwhelm. Many memoir and essay writers also strive to figure out how to balance past and present voices, and persona helps take the guesswork out of it.
Memoir and essay writers also frequently engage with difficult, intimate material that must be carefully shaped and revealed. By curating an authentic persona, a version of you, you can guide how your story is toldâmaintaining artistic control while still honoring your truth. This live webinar will explore techniques for creating a written persona, which is partly a process of mining for the influences that inform your authentic voice and making intentional choices at the sentence and scene level.
Drawn from Jordan Rosenfeldâs book The Sound of Story: Developing Voice and Tone in Writing, and her experience as a well-published essayist and novelist, this live webinar will hand you practical tools for putting your âselfâ on the page exactly as you intend.
This live webinar will include some writing prompts and time for questions and answers.
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Meet the instructor
Jordan Rosenfeld
Jordan Rosenfeld is author of the novels Fallout, Women in Red and Forged in Grace and the forthcoming Seeking Solace (â28) and eight books on the craft of writing, including, Writing Through the Pause: Mining Midlife for Powerful Writing (Jan. â27), The Sound of Story: Developing Voice and Tone in Writing, How to Write a Page-Turner, the bestselling Make a Scene, Writing the Intimate Character, A Writerâs Guide to Persistence, Writing Deep Scenes (with Martha Alderson) and Write Free (with Rebecca Lawton). Her freelance writing has been published in hundreds of publications, including: The Atlantic, The New York Times, Publisherâs Weekly, Salon, Scientific American, The Rumpus, Writerâs Digest Magazine, The Washington Post and many more. She is also a freelance manuscript editor, writing coach and teaches online classes. Jordanrosenfeld.net. Her Substack, âWriting In the Pauseâ can be found at: jordanwritelife.substack.com.
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