WS302 Paris Vignettes: How to Capture Revealing Moments, Encounters and Events

This 5-week writing workshop allows participants to hone their writing skills through the creation of vignettes: short scenes that focus on a moment, a character, an encounter, a mood or a place.

Our experiences and encounters in Paris are too often interpreted or recorded in terms of tourism and clichés. By understanding how to create vignettes, writers are able to go beyond that by examining moments, encounters and events that reveal far more about life, travel, place, strangers, our relationships and ourselves.

Though the emphasis of this workshop will be on non-fiction vignettes of up to 1500 words, participants will learn the importance of scene work that will then enhance their writing of longer works of fiction, non-fiction and memoir as well as unique travel blogs.

Participants will complete at least one vignette per week, most of which will be discussed during the workshop.

Instructor: Gary Lee Kraut is the editor of the online travel and culture magazine France Revisited, www.FranceRevisited.com. He is the author of five travel guides to France and Paris as well as numerous articles, essays, short stories, and op-ed pieces concerning travel, culture, cross-culture and expatriate life. He has taught creative writing and travel writing and has lectured extensively in the United States and France.