The Algonkian approach is unique, and unequalled in other novel workshops. Algonkian is preferred because of its author study selections, novel foundation exercises, prose enhancement guides, and core focus on dramatic complication and theme as the primary elements upon which character, plot, and all other elements build. Participants learn novel technique, style, and structure from over 20 of the most powerful and original novelists (and dramatists) including Flannery O'Connor, Emily Brontë, Italo Calvino, Nabokov, Hemingway, E. Annie Proulx, Tennessee Williams, David Mamet, Nathaniel West, and Robert Graves.

Algonkian course exercises are foundation designed, that is, each writer works their novel from the ground up, step-by-stepping novel basics as the workshop progresses. Writers new to the novel gain the immediate advantage of being able to complicate, plot, and structure their novels in an accomplished manner right from the onset. Writers who have not yet begun the novel will have it started before the end of the workshop. Also emphasized are prose drills and narrative enhancement guides designed to hone style.

Please note that Algonkian is NOT a group critique workshop. Individual critique and guidance is provided by the workshop leader based on each student's needs .

Workshopping by studying and applying secrets of craft and prose: the workshop will examine, discuss, and then work through specific craft and prose exercises derived from direct analysis of a select group of works (including poems). This group currently includes:

• "Moon Lake" (Eudora Welty)
• "Herzog" (Saul Bellow)
• "Rhinoceros" (Eugene Ionesco)
• "The Shipping News" (E. Annie Proulx)
• "Claudius The God" (Robert Graves)
• "Under The Jaguar Sun" (Italo Calvino)
• "Lolita" (Vladimir Nabokov)
• "The Far Field" (Theodore Roethke)
• "Wise Blood" (Flannery O'Connor)
• "The Great Gatsby" (F. Scott Fitzgerald)
• "All the King's Men" (Robert Penn Warren)
• "The Painted Bird" (Jerzy Kosinski)
• "The Glass Menagerie" (Tennessee Williams)
• "Man's Fate" (Andre Malraux)
• "Miss Lonelyhearts" (Nathaniel West)
• "The Sun Also Rises" (Ernest Hemingway)
• "Ariel" (Sylvia Plath)
• "Wuthering Heights" (Emily Brontë)
• "One Hundred Years of Solitude" (Gabriel G. Marquez)
• "The Centaur" (John Updike), and others.

Workshop participants will study an impressive array of narrative, scene, and structure technique, enabling them to begin, enhance, and/or reconstruct their novel in more powerful ways. Also, myths of novel writing will be quickly dispelled! Participants will be provided with considerable instruction and reference materials, including an "author checklist" and a "prose description guide" to be used while writing the novel.

The workshop will analyze and discuss novel elements, narrative, prose style, and techniques learned from the following authors/poets/playrights, and while performing the following workshop exercises:

1. What The Successful Author Must Possess
	Purpose in Writing, Knowledge, "The Plan," Notes, The Single Best Author Tool

2. Major Complication Analysis
	Drama Theory, Statement of Conflict, Rising Action, 15 Steps of Complication, Reader Reaction Flow	Dryden, H. Miller, Krutch, Kesey
Exercise: Students will devise one major complication

3. Theme in The Novel
	Statement of Theme, Importance, Application and Representation	Malraux, West, Kesey, Ionesco
Exercise: creation of a primary "theme statement"

4. Methods of Character Development
	Animation Sketching, Cognition and Affect, Social Reaction Profile, Tics and Tags, Epiphany and Emotional Evolution	S. Anderson, E. Brontë, Fitzgerald, West, Hemingway
Exercise: animation sketch of at least one major character

5. Plot Devices and Other Needs
	Scene Construction, Verisimilitude, POV, Masking, Foreshadow, Timesim, Exposition, Surprise, Minor Complication, Character Transformation	Zola, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Ibsen, O'Connor, R.P. Warren, West, Knowles, Nabokov
Exercise: diagram a prototype plot flow

6. Story Enhancement Techniques
	Stages of an event, seeding of minor complications and sub-events, anecdotal devices, imagery, details, the human condition	R. Graves
Exercise: Given background, students will write one anecdote

7. Narrative Enhancement Techniques
	Delayed Cognition, Variable Tense, Spatial-temporal Transitions, Irreal Tone, Sentence Embellishment, Importance of Subject Matter, Narrative Styles	Puig, O'Connor, Kosinski, Ellison, Updike, Proulx, Marquez, Calvino, Brontë
Exercise: Given prose enhancement guide, students     will practice descriptive narrative variations

8. Dialogue Forms and Functions
	Major Functions, Need for Inclusion of Specific Elements, Types of Dialogue, Narrative Interjections	R. Price, Joyce, T. Williams, Hemingway
Exercise: Given background, students will write one major     scene with dialogue

9. Suspense Techniques
	Surreal description, suggestion, pondering, foreshadow, character, motifs, provocation	McInerney, Kesey, O'Connor
Exercise: students will experiment with technique in narrative

10. Prose Style Enhancement
	Prose drills, prose narrative guides, and exercises	Shakespeare, Roethke, Plath, Welty, M. Martone
Exercise: specific drills/exercises designed to hone style

STEPS: Please pre-register for the workshop by using our pre-registration form. If the info required by the form does not apply to you then simply tell us something about yourself, including your goals as a writer. Mail your deposit check for $240 payable to "The Algonkian Author's Workshop" prior to 12/01/01 Please bring the balance of your payment to workshop. The total fee for the weekend workshop is $485.00 and that includes your private room at the Village Inn for two nights, plus all materials, a wonderful breakfast, lunch snacks and drinks. Transportation to the Village Inn and dinners are not included. There are wonderful dining establishments nearby and the Village Inn food is superb.

The shop begins at 8:30 AM each morning and lasts till 6:00 PM each evening.

Our Boston area Algonkian is held at the Village Inn located on 16 Church Street in Lenox, Massachusetts, in the Berkshires. This authentic New England inn was built in 1771. Stenciled wallpapers and Oriental rugs in the public rooms compliment the Inn's maple floors and Federal architecture. All of the thirty-two Guest Rooms are individually furnished with country antiques and reproductions. All rooms have telephone with voice mail, 20" or 25" TV with VCR, and CD player alarm clocks, and private bath. Within a short walking distance is the town of Lennox with shopping, restaurants, and a fine bookstore as a bonus.

Directions from Boston: Take the Massachusetts Turnpike to Exit 2, marked Lee. Follow Route 20 West about 4 miles beyond Lee to the first traffic light. Turn left on to Route 183 into Lenox. For directions from New York and Hartford, click here.

Your reservations will be booked through the Algonkian Workshop. We will take care of it for you. More information about the Village Inn can be found on their website.

Email us at algonkian@webdelsol.com if you have further questions, or phone us
at 703-264-1729. Our address for mailing is:

WDS/Algonkian
Massachusetts Workshop
2020 Pennsylvania Ave. NW
Suite 443
Washington, DC 20006

Look forward to seeing you there. Please bring plenty of paper!

Michael Neff is the founder and executive director of the WDS Association (the foremost publisher of periodical contemporary literature) which includes Web del Sol (#10 in Writer's Digest Fiction Top 50), the Words Work Network, and Algonkian Workshops. He is publisher of several national literary magazines including In Posse Review, 5_Trope, Perihelion, and La Petite Zine. He is also the editor-in-chief of Del Sol Review. His own work has appeared in such publications as The Literary Review, North American Review, Mudlark, Octavo, Quarterly West, Pittsburgh Quarterly, Conjunctions, and American Way Magazine. He has seven years editorial experience in literary publishing and in working with other editors and writers to hone fiction and novel excerpts into publishable work.