One of the most baffling aspects of being a writer can be dealing with exposition in writing. Exposition – or background and setting – is essential. You need to anchor the reader with background or explain/describe/inform the reader about something, and before you know it, you’ve got lots of exposition slowing things down. What to do?

This workshop gives practical steps to make to make these necessary aspects of your story more dynamic. We will cover ways to examine and evaluate exposition passages, discover how and whether they can or should be converted to scenes, and investigate ways to distribute necessary information more dynamically throughout your story.

It will be a hands on workshop, so come with writing materials and a piece of your own expository writing that you want to work with.

Instructor bio: Joan B. Flood grew up in Limerick, Ireland and lived briefly in France and England before settling in Canada. She spent a number of years in Ottawa, Toronto and Hamilton, Ontario before putting down roots in Vancouver. Her poetry, short fiction, and non-fiction have been published in anthologies Room of One’s Own, By Word of Mouth, Emerge, (Canada), Lesbian Bedtime Stories, Binnacle Ninth Annual Ultra-Short Story Competition 2012 (USA) and Wee Girls: Women Writing from an Irish Perspective (Australia). She published a Young Adult novel, New Girl, in 2012.