You have a
story to tell. If it’s an autobiography, just because it happened to you, it’s
not necessarily interesting. If it’s a biography, it has been a couple of
centuries since you could start with the day your subject was born and proceed
from there. If it’s historical, how do you interweave your individual’s life
with the major events of the day? In short, to persuade your reader to buy,
read, and enjoy your book, you’ve got to answer the question for your
prospective reader, “Why should I care?”
Join author Peter H. Green at 10 a.m., Saturday, June 3, at The Lodge Des Peres for a workshop presentation, “Making Biography Readable, Salable and Absorbing.” Free to members of the St. Louis Writers Guild; $5 for nonmembers.
He will explore the options and techniques of narrative, or “creative” nonfiction, establishing the premise or “hook” for the story setting the scene, creating dialogue, plot development, pacing, and weaving your story into its historical background.
Peter--a writer, architect, and city planner reared in a family of journalists--found his father’s 400 World War II letters, his humorous war stories, his mother’s writings, and his family’s often hilarious doings too good a tale to keep to himself, so he launched a second career as a writer.
After years of architectural work and proposal writing for his design firms, he went back to Washington University to study creative writing with such accomplished authors as Catherine Rankovic, Robert Earleywine, and Rick Skwiot, resulting in the release in 2005 of his biographical memoir on the often humorous antics and serious achievements of his dad’s World War II adventure, Ben’s War with the U.S. Marines, (Second edition, Greenskills Press, 2014) and Radio: One Woman’s Family in War and Pieces (Greenskills Press, Nov., 2016). The life and times of the last pet he owned. “The Night We Ruined the Dog,” can be found on his website, www.peterhgreen.com.
Learn more about the St. Louis Writers Guild at www.stlwritersguild.org
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