INSIDE THE CHARACTER TECHNIQUES FOR WRITING THOUGH AND EMOTION IN FICTION: Online Master Class

INSIDE THE CHARACTER: TECHNIQUES FOR WRITING THOUGHT AND EMOTION IN FICTION
with Award-winning Author JOHN COPENHAVER

What is fiction’s superpower? What can it do that no other narrative form—like film, television, or theater—can? It can take us inside a character’s mind. Fiction grants us access to thought, feeling, memory, and desire with an intimacy no other medium allows. Yet many emerging writers struggle to render their characters’ inner lives convincingly. In this two-hour craft class, we’ll explore techniques like free indirect discourse and the strengths and limits of first-person narration. We’ll also discuss how to blend interiority into scene, navigate emotional and cultural roadblocks, study vivid examples, and try short exercises to put it all into practice.

YOUR MASTER CLASS INSTRUCTOR:
JOHN COPENHAVER is an award-winning author whose novel Hall of Mirrors was a New York Times Best Crime Novel and won the Left Coast Crime Award. His debut, Dodging and Burning, won the Macavity Award, and The Savage Kind earned the Lambda Literary Award. A founding member of Queer Crime Writers, he teaches at Virginia Commonwealth University, mentors in the University of Nebraska MFA program, and lives in Richmond, Virginia, with his husband, ceramic artist Jeffery Paul.

Presented online, via the Zoom platform, by James River Writers

Your registration includes access to the recording.

$50 JRW Members | $75 Non-Members

You do not have to attend the in-person conference to register for this Master Class. Available a la carte.

2025 Pre-Conference Master Classes