|
Schenectady
High School
March
29 2010
Author
holds writing workshop
Students learn to develop characters, get tips on storytelling
 Write,
write and write some more was the advice that Jamie Ford, author
of the New York Times bestseller, Hotel on the Corner of
Bitter and Sweet, gave to aspiring writers at Schenectady
High School on Friday. Ford led the juniors through
small group workshops in which he spoke about his experience as
a writer and gave the young writers some tips about
storytelling.
The author
began the workshop by learning a little about what the students
like to read. He asked each of them what book they
love and which they hate. Ford briefly reviewed the two lists
which included a few of the same titles like the Twilight
series and a few Shakespeare works. He then explained that
he does that exercise because he’s curious about what books the
students are reading. He added that people usually enjoy
books that have characters their own age. “Everybody
has his own reading taste. That’s a good thing,” said Ford.
“When you go out in the world, keep that in mind.”
 "Don’t
worry about the process but focus on the story,” said Ford to
the attentive group of students. “I consider myself a
storyteller, not a writer,” he said. He then spent some time
talking with the students about the process of identifying a
character for a story, selecting the point of view and making
the story interesting.
He guided
the group through a developmental exercise in which they defined
the elements of a potential book character and listed an array
of characteristics and problems. He suggested that the
students look for the worst possible scenario. “You want to
take it to the bottom of the barrel and pull it out,” he
suggested. “People who have no problems make very boring
stories.”
Ford
listed the process for storytelling which includes the basic
characters, the problem, drilling down to find more interesting
problems and then writing about them. He reiterated that it is
important to start with an extreme problem and build the story
from there. Going to extreme, makes it an interesting story,”
Ford said. “If the little voice in your head is saying, ‘this is
boring,’ you need to rethink it.”
The
students asked the writer how he determines who should tell the story.
“The point of view character should be the one with the most
interesting problems,” Ford explained. He also told the group
that the story can be told through two points of view. “It’s
okay to take it to where it gets crazy,” said Ford, referring
specifically to the scenario and characteristics that the
students developed during the exercise.
Ford also
spoke briefly about magic and fantasy. “Once you cross into the
realm of fantasyland, you can go there and it’s no longer
absurd,” he explained. “We are in the land of make-believe.”
He also told the students that magic needs rules. “When you’re
writing fantasy, you’re building a rule system for the magic,”
he added explaining that if there’s a price to magic, the writer
can build tension.
“I have a
theory about writers block,” he responded to a student who was
curious how Ford manages. “It’s your subconscious telling you
that your writing isn’t very good,” he said. “Go back and look
at the story.”
Ford
encouraged students to have an idea where their stories are
going and explained that most writers can’t sit down and just
write a book. “I have to have an ending in mind,” Ford said.
Ford gave
the students some advice on how to make it as a writer. “The
best thing you can do is write, just write,” he said. He
compared writing to a playing a musical instrument. “You
wouldn’t sit down and start playing Mozart,” he said.
“Sometimes people sit down at the computer and try to write
Mozart.” Ford told the students if they want to write to play,
practice, put the time in and map out ideas. “Allow yourself to
suck,” he added. “Allow yourself room to grow and keep at it.”
The
students were interested in learning more about the writer's
background. He explained to the students he has a college
degree in art and design and worked in advertising. “I can tell
stories because I worked at it and like to tell stories,” he
said. “I started writing real things after my parents died and
I looked into their past,” he said.
Hotel on
the Corner of Bitter and Sweet,
is the second of three books the author has written. Ford said
he shelved the first book he wrote and the third and newest,
Whisper of a Thunder God, is being edited.
“You can
make a living as a writer,” said Ford, who also noted that his
book is number one in Norway. The students were interested in
how much money he makes and what kind of car he drives. He
told the group he has five cars and make twice the amount of a
first year major league baseball player.
The students smiled and
nodded.
Hotel on
the Corner of Bitter and Sweet
is also Schenectady’s One County, One Book choice.
About the
Author
Jamie Ford is the great grandson of Nevada
mining pioneer Min Chung, who emigrated from Kaiping, China, to
San Francisco in 1865, where he adopted the western name “Ford,”
thus confusing countless generations. An award-winning
short-story writer, Ford is an alumnus of the Squaw Valley
Community of Writers and a survivor of Orson Card’s Literary
Boot Camp. Having grown up near Seattle’s Chinatown, he now
lives in Montana (where he is on a never-ending quest to find
decent dim sum). Visit him at
www.jamieford.com.
About
Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet
Jamie
Ford’s New York Times bestselling debut novel HOTEL ON
THE CORNER OF BITTER AND SWEET (A Ballantine Books Trade
Paperback; On Sale: October 6, 2009) begins with an event that
happened in real life. In the opening pages, the fictional
protagonist Henry Lee comes upon a crowd gathered outside the
Panama Hotel—once the gateway to Seattle’s Japantown, and still
standing today. It has been boarded up for decades, but the new
owner has made an incredible discovery: the belongings of
Japanese families, left when they were rounded up and sent to
internment camps during World War II. As Henry looks on, the
owner opens a Japanese parasol.
This
simple act takes Henry back to the 1940s, at the height of the
war. Young Henry’s world is a jumble of confusion and
excitement. His father, obsessed with the war in China and
determined that Henry grow up American, sends him to the
exclusive Ranier Elementary. The white kids ignore him, but
Henry soon meets Keiko Okabe, a young Japanese American and
fellow scholarship student. Amid the chaos of blackouts,
curfews, and FBI raids, Henry and Keiko forge a bond of
friendship—and innocent love—that transcends the long-standing
prejudices of their Old World ancestors. When Keiko and her
family are swept up in the evacuations to the internment camps,
she and Henry cling to each other and hope that the war will
end.
Forty
years later, Henry Lee is convinced that the parasol belonged to
Keiko. In the hotel’s dark dusty basement, he begins looking
for the Okabe family’s belongings, and for a long-lost object
whose value he cannot begin to measure. Now a widower, Henry
also searches for his own voice—in order to explain the actions
of his nationalistic father; bridge the gap between him and his
own modern, Chinese-American son; and help him confront the
choices he made many years ago. In Henry and Keiko, Jamie Ford
has created an unforgettable duo. Set during one of the most
conflicted and volatile times in American history, HOTEL ON
THE CORNER OF BITTER AND SWEET is an extraordinary story of
commitment and enduring hope.
Back
|
