How to Conquer Writer’s Block: Attack the Blank Page Using Skills from the Stage

Saturday, July 9 (1 day) / 10 a.m. – 1 p.m.

“My inner critic began piping up about how hopeless I was and how I didn’t know how to write.” Author Mary Garden

Feeling intimidated by the blank page? Unsure where to start? All out of ideas? This innovative course is for you. We’ll borrow techniques developed by the masters of improvisational theater to obliterate writer’s block, uncork your creative juices, and conquer your doubts. You’ll spend part of this dynamic workshop on your feet, learning the basics of “collaboration without a net.” Then we’ll apply those principles to your writing. This unique three-hour experience is designed to help writers at any level invent character and setting, heighten emotional arcs, raise stakes, and discover story. You’ll come away with concrete skills you can use any time to silence your inner critic and unleash your voice as a writer.

Dan Grech’s twin passions are storytelling and improv. He’s spent two decades as a reporter and editor for newspapers, public radio, and television. And for much of that time he’s performed in a narrative improv troupe called Chasing Tales. Dan has taught at Princeton, Columbia Journalism School, the University of Miami, and the Idea Center at MDC, and he is a graduate of the MFA program in Creative Writing at FIU. He lives in Miami Beach with his wife, Gretchen Beesing, and his daughter, Iris.