WORKSHOP: Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Grammar & Style But Didn’t Think It Really Mattered

DEADLINE EXTENDED! ONLY FIVE MORE DAYS TO REGISTER!


The Carolina Romance Writers Chapter of RWA is pleased to announce our April Online Workshop:

WORKSHOP: Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Grammar & Style But Didn’t Think It Really Mattered

INSTRUCTOR: Annie Oortman and Darlene Buchholz

DATE: April 5th- April 30th 2010 Standard Workshop

Regular, (Month-long) classes, consisting of at least 2 lessons per week for CRW and HCRW members is $15, all others $25

WORKSHOP DESCRIPTION:

Grammar-crammer… who cares about how verb tenses; dangled, misplaced, and squinted modifiers; and that dreaded passive voice? You should!

Most people would rather have a paper cut on the inside of their lip than learn better grammar. But good writing requires good grammar. Without it, you can’t really be sure your reader will understand the information you’re trying to convey, the story you’re trying to tell, and the mental picture you’re trying to paint.

The Grammar Divas (an English teacher and a professional copywriter, both budding novelists) do something most “grammar-for-better-writing” books, courses, and websites don’t do—focus on grammar for fiction writing.

First, we’ll go over the basics to ensure you haven’t forgotten everything from school. Then, we’ll move onto issues that affect sentence structure and paragraph development. Next, we’ll review the finer points of punctuation and style as well as common grammar errors. Then, we’ll show you how to enhance your writing’s curb appeal to make the most of your writing’s appearance, readability, and impact. After that, we’ll demonstrate how cutting the fat from your writing is the quickest and surest way to improve your writing. Finally, we’ll solve some crimes against sentence, sharing the grammatical forensics you can use to uncover evidence of poor writing and troubleshoot problem sentences.

INSTRUCTOR BIO:

Grammar wasn't Annie Oortman's first love (actually, it was a cute boy in her second-grade class named Henry Talley) or even her second (avoiding barn work). However, after getting an A for content but an F for readability on a third-grade book report, she learned having great ideas was one thing, communicating them well on paper another. Annie became a disciple of the church of Proper Grammar and card-carrying member of The Society for the Promotion of Good Grammar (www.spogg.org). Nowadays, she diagrams sentences for fun (yes, for fun), corrects her children when they say "I did good on the test" (I did well.), and argues with fellow grammar devotees on the acceptability of ending a sentence with a preposition (don't do it).

BTW, Annie is hoping to see her name on the cover of a fiction novel soon... very soon. (And, if you’re wondering, Henry Talley never even noticed Annie as he had a mad crush on blonde-haired, blue-eyed Libby Boxler.)

Darlene Buchholz fell in love in the first grade with a boy named Neil. He shared his crackers and milk at recess after someone took her snack and never got caught. She’s loved romance and intrigue ever since. By the third grade, she discovered Nancy Drew mysteries and developed a great passion for perky heroines who drove convertibles (proof they were in charge of their own lives). She wrote her own one-hundred-page mysteries, giving the heroine a much better hero than wimpy Ned Nickerson, who seemed more fashion accessory than hero. What woman wouldn’t prefer a cowboy or a cop named…well, Neil, of course?

Darlene never thought of grammar as a challenge. It was, instead, a tool to help her express the ideas she felt passionate about. She served as a peer mentor in junior high and high school. Becoming a high school English teacher was a natural for Darlene. She loved sharing ideas expressed in great literature and exposition.

Now, family raised, Darlene has decided to write stories again. She writes romantic suspense, and sometimes her heroines drive trucks rather than convertibles. Her heroes are still cowboys and cops. She hopes to publish soon.

BTW… Darlene disagrees with Annie about the acceptability of ending a sentence with a preposition. Yes, you can! No one, absolutely no one, including Annie, says: On what did you step? Not in casual conversation and not in situations where you’d like to impress the committee in charge of awarding you a grant or a fellowship. We all say: What did you step on?

Register at http://www.carolinaromancewriters.com/april10.htm