The Art of Teleportation: How to Write with a Strong Sense of Place with Laia Jufresa

Writing is a bidimensional medium. Yet good books leave us feeling as if we’ve been somewhere. How is that possible?

In this workshop you will learn how to create three dimensional spaces that your readers can enter. Sure, we want our readers to have an emotional experience but in literature, just like in life, our emotional experience is informed and altered by our surroundings. This is why place shouldn’t be neglected in your writing.

A scene’s setting can serve as so much more than backdrop. It can enhance the atmosphere, communicate non-verbally, ground your story, enrich your world building, keep your reader away from their phone because they’ve found an interesting place to visit and explore.

But if you want to transport your reader, first you have to learn how to transport yourself. How to stop writing like you’re building a set and start writing like you’re entering a fully formed, charged, real place.

Course Outline

A general theme of this workshop is Presence. You cannot teleport yourself if you’re only half-here. So we will write in situ. Sharing will be optional.

Session I: Set vs. Setting: Writing Meaningful Places

• Trusting Your Imagination: If you can imagine it, it exists.
• Trusting Your Memory: What if the map is the territory?
• Trusting Your Experience: How to connect place to emotion.

Session II: Surprise Landings

• Play and Improvisation: How to let go of control (because you’re not God, nor an architect).
• Research vs. Travel: How to practice the art of teleportation.
• Untrusting Attention: Less description, better chosen details.

Capacity: 20