THE MINCER-CHARACTER IMMERSION WORKSHOP FOCUS
“The Mincer” is an immersive interior/exterior character discovery experience that will get you deep inside your character’s head and emotional reality, while staying rooted in their setting. This multi-layered exercise has been developed over the past twenty years of Britta’s experience working on character development in both Off-Broadway theatre and the publishing world in the UK and US. During the workshop we’ll focus on going deep and immersing yourself in your character’s inner and outer life, as well as unveiling exciting esoteric layers in between. Explore character development from a more subconscious level in this workshop and connect with your character’s deeper history, emotional reality and voice.
This workshop is online and fully interactive: in addition to your computer/tablet, you’ll need a notebook and pens/pencils to get the most out of the experience. Participants will walk away from the workshop with up to 500 words of new material as well as a rooted understanding of their character to guide drafting and revision.
This course will cover the following topics:
- Using visual imagery to jump into your character’s emotional landscape
- Drawing on visual and sensory mapping to explore your character’s world (perfect for all fiction genres)
- Using word association and multi-modalties to “mince” your character’s reality to discover new unexpected truths about your character’s inner world
- Immersing yourself in your character’s outer world
- Merging inner and outer worlds of characters and continuing the discovery process
- Next steps for integrating the exercise into your developing draft (or moving forward with edits).
Who should take this course?
- Fiction writers of all genres who are looking to deeply explore their character’s inner and outer world in an unconventional and experimental way
- Fiction writers who are stuck on a particular character and looking for an “aha moment” to draw out what their character is still hiding.
- Fiction writers interested in taking a live, online course with a focused group of peers.
- Previous experience is not required. You can be at the beginning stage of your writing process or very experienced. This workshop is designed for all levels.
What does the course include?
- All digital handouts
- Exercises that can spur up to 500 words or more of new material.
- Explorations you can use in your writing again.
- Access to the recording
- Access to all the slides (in pdf)
Deliverables for Students
- Digital handouts
- Course recording
- Class slides
- Q&A answers
PRICE $100
How do I know if the course is worth the cost?
This is a difficult question to answer, as live, online classes (with access to all of the above after the course concludes) can range anywhere from $25-175+. This course is priced so that writers with a variety of budgets can learn and participate.
However, ultimately you decide if this form of investment in your writing is best for your budget, writing goals, and work. We hope that you will find value in Britta’s instruction (you can read more in her bio below).
About the instructor:
Britta Jensen has spent seventeen years in the literacy education and publishing world. She is the award-winning novelist of the Eloia Born series. She has also received numerous awards, including the General Sharp Award, for her teaching of creative writing and literature. Many of her stories explore themes of persevering through disability, parental separation and the intersection of various cultures in new worlds. She holds a BA in Acting Performance from Fordham University and an MA in Teaching of English Literature from Columbia University. Friends often refer to her as a polyglot—which is a product of living twenty-two years overseas in Japan, South Korea, and Germany before settling in Austin, Texas. She enjoys mentoring writers and editing books with The Writing Consultancy and Yellowbird Editors and teaches first-year writing at St. Edward’s University. (Photo credit: Peter Domican)
Testimonials from Previous Students
“The class was so rich with ideas and wonderful exercises…I also loved the advice to not focus so much on rewriting the beginning (which is something so many of us do!) but instead to try to finish a draft and then go back to rework the beginning.”–Maureen Turner Carey, author & librarian
“I like the way you provide a mechanism to explore what a character might do, not necessarily in the context of the story, but just behave if I extracted them from the story and watched them go.”–Sam Ritter, author
“So much revealed in so little time!”–Roanna Flowers, author of Dramedy Au Contraire
