LitPDX seeks to amplify marginalized voices, and welcomes all, their ideas, their events, and their words.

For details regarding specific events please contact the organizers or venues. If you are an organizer or venue and would like to reach out to us please feel free to contact us or submit an event using our submission form. We’d love to hear from you!

Shapeshifting: Creating Authentic Characters with Randall Jahnson

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Meets Tues/Thurs 11am-12:30pm | Aug 11, Aug 13, Aug 18, Aug 20 To create believable characters, all successful artists, writers, directors, animators, and performers employ a unique ability that allows them to crawl into someone else’s skin, inhabit it, and express what it’s like to be that individual. We call this “shapeshifting.” This workshop will focus on how to use shapeshifting to make characters come alive in any medium. First, you will create a mindset, complete with complexity and a range of traits and emotions. Next, you’ll conjure a physical form, an appearance, a look. Then you’ll build an environment for your character, followed by the world itself, and the context for a story. Choose from writing and sketching to photography and film to render…

Free

Beautiful, Flawed, and Troubled: Creating Memorable Characters with Carter Sickels

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

WHAT: A four-week generative online collaboration WHEN: Begins Saturday, February 6th, 2021. This class is hosted on our rich interactive online platform, WetInk. The class is broken into four weeks, and within those weeks you go at your own pace. Optional Zoom “happy hours” and a final Zoom class reading may be scheduled at a later date. ACCESS: $350. Payment plans always available—contact Daniel at registration@corporealwriting.com SCHOLARSHIPS: Scholarships are available, please click here to apply. The most memorable characters in fiction are the most human, motivated by desires and regrets, and deeply shaped by places, people, and memories. In this creative incubator, we’ll explore how to develop complex characters with emotional depth. How does desire inform the mystery of a character? How do characters think…

$350

Core Character & Environment Online Class (7 Weeks)

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

In this class you will explore the improvisational storytelling principles of Characterization and Environment which include playing with point of view, physicality, how to build the space, finding the game, heightening, status and more. Learn how to make strong choices for yourself and hold on to them while supporting the choices made by your scene partner. COST: Early Bird (until Feb 21) $240.00 Regular Price (after Feb 21) $270 for this 7 week course ATTENTION: THIS CLASS WILL TAKE PLACE ONLINE. You will need a reliable internet connection, a laptop and a generally distraction free location in order to participate. This is an anti-racist, anti-misogynist, anti-abelist, anti-homophobic, anti-transphobic, anti-ageist class that strives to be inclusive of all experiences. We are always learning and aim to…

$240 – $270

Craft Conversations: Character

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

If you are interested in taking a dive into how to make full, complicated, compelling characters in your work, if you want your reader to be thinking about your people (even if that character is you) long after they finish your novel, story, or memoir, if you want to deeply engage your reader, you must develop characters that drive the story, that matter to the reader, that we can root for, that rise up off the page. For this conversation I’ll bring, readings, handouts, exercises and practical ideas. We will look at protagonists, as well as at secondary characters and the important jobs they have in making a story come to life. Access Program We want our writing classes to be accessible to everyone, regardless…

$75

Writing Characters Who Take Up Space

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

For all the descriptive writing in the world, it is often difficult to fully realize a physical body in a physical space for a reader. Bodies are so varied, spaces contain so many possibilities, but both bodies and spatial possibilities are often overlooked in writing craft. This class will use ideas presented in Amy Cuddy’s book, Presence: Bringing your Boldest Self to Your Biggest Challenges, Bessel Van Der Kolk’s, The Body Keeps Score, and others, to present new ways of exploring the physical presence of characters on the page, their experiences with themselves, with their environment and with other characters. Access Program We want our writing classes to be accessible to everyone, regardless of income and background. We understand that our tuition structure can present…

$190

Beautiful, Flawed, and Troubled: Creating Memorable Characters with Carter Sickels

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

WHAT: A four-week generative online collaboration WHEN: Begins Saturday, October 16th, 2021. This class is hosted on our rich interactive online platform, WetInk. The class is broken into four weeks, and within those weeks you go at your own pace. There will be one Zoom meeting at the end of the class to wrap things up, date TBD. ACCESS: $350. Payment plans always available—contact Daniel at registration@corporealwriting.com SCHOLARSHIPS: Scholarships are available, please click here to apply. The most memorable characters in fiction are the most human, motivated by desires and regrets, and deeply shaped by places, people, and memories. In this creative incubator, we’ll explore how to develop complex characters with emotional depth. How does desire inform the mystery of a character? How do characters…

$350

Writing Characters Who Take Up Space

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

For all the descriptive writing in the world, it is often difficult to fully realize a physical body in a physical space for a reader. Bodies are so varied, spaces contain so many possibilities, but both bodies and spatial possibilities are often overlooked in writing craft. This class will use ideas presented in Amy Cuddy’s book, Presence: Bringing your Boldest Self to Your Biggest Challenges, Bessel Van Der Kolk’s, The Body Keeps Score, and others, to present new ways of exploring the physical presence of characters on the page, their experiences with themselves, with their environment and with other characters. Access Program We want our writing classes to be accessible to everyone, regardless of income and background. We understand that our tuition structure can present…

$190

Creating Vibrant and Complex Characters

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

This generative workshop will focus on the skills involved in creating and sustaining vibrant and complex characters. Through a series of in-workshop prompts and exercises participants will create and bring to life vivid characters. We will focus on physical description, internal life, setting, scene, action, and dialogue to round out and bring our creations to life. Close attention will be paid to literary and poetic devices. Supportive in-workshop sharing and feedback will be part of the process. Access Program We want our writing classes and Delves to be accessible to everyone, regardless of income and background. We understand that our tuition structure can present obstacles for some people. Our Access Program offers writing class and Delve tuitions at a reduced rate. The access program for…

$80