Course Details
963: Writing Like a Pro: Tips to Fine-Tune Your Storytelling
July 10-11
11:45 AM -
1:15 PM
Online
The workshop will demonstrate by way of examples how to improve your creative writing through the use of several narrative techniques, including the following:
1. When and how to use Deep POV with indirect and direct thoughts.
2. How to foreshadow without telegraphing.
3. Ways to get back and forth in time, including flashbacks.
4. How imagery lends the story authenticity.
5. Using personification to make your writing vivid and unique.
6. Utilizing delay to heighten suspense.
7. Trusting your reader by not overexplaining.
8. Writing Tools to Elevate your Prose:
a) The Absolute Phrase a/k/a Nominative Absolute
b) The Subjunctive
9. Starting in Media Res
10. Avoiding Adverbs to Explain or Punch Up Weak Dialogue
Class Type: Lecture and Discussion
Class Format: Online
Hours of Reading: Less than 1 hour/session
Study Group Leader(s):
Peter BernhardtFor Peter Bernhardt, writing has been a life-long pursuit. At age 23, he emigrated from Germany and became a naturalized US citizen. Subsequent to graduating at the top of his law school class, where he was editor-in-chief of the law journal, he practiced law for 25 years, including 18 years as civil chief and trial lawyer at the US Attorney’s Office in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Peter’s three novels pay homage to his German upbringing, practicing law and his passion for the greatest art form – opera. His spy thriller, The Stasi File: Opera and Espionage: A Deadly Combination (Diva Undaunted Book 1) takes place in the weeks after the fall of the Berlin Wall. It won first place in the 2022 Arizona Authors Association Literary Contest, and was a quarterfinalist in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award.
The sequel, Kiss of The Shaman's Daughter: Revolt, Lost Treasure, and Smugglers (Diva Undaunted Book 2) features ruthless Santa Fe antiquities traffickers after the treasure of a lost pueblo as well as the legend of a Pueblo Indian girl involved in the Pueblo Indian Revolt of 1680. It won second place in the 2022 Arizona Authors Association Literary Contest.
The fierce Cold War espionage battle between East– and West Germany inspired Peter to write Red Romeo: Stasi Gigolos and the Spy Hunter of Germany (Inspired by Actual Events) in which Stasi Romeos prey on lonely women working in the West German government’s most secret divisions. The novel won first prize in the 2023 Arizona Authors Association Literary Contest.
The novels are available in German language editions, two of which Peter translated.