This is a brief post to welcome you to Into The Workshop!
My name is Jennifer McMahon. I’m an Irish writer, not to be confused with the American author of the same name. You might know me best as the joint Editor-in-Chief of Frazzled Lit, which I run with my friend and colleague Laura Cooney. You can find out more about me in my About page.
It’ll look a little sparse around here to begin with, but give it a couple of weeks and I’ll have some serious content for you.
What is Into The Workshop?
Into The Workshop is a rare opportunity to observe and interact with a working writer in a near-realtime workshop environment as she develops various types of works-in-progress from inception through writing the first and subsequent drafts, including the full editing process, all the way up to and including submission. You’ll gain insights into my process, and will learn with me as I develop various projects from inception to final draft.
I will send out one post every week; we all get more than enough emails in our inboxes every day, and I don’t want to add more than necessary. I’ll keep the posts short, informative and to the point, because we’re all busy people.
Our first project will be a literary dystopian novel, with the working title Angel Fall, which I hope to have submission-ready within the next eighteen months. We’ll also work on short stories and flash fiction from time to time, to take a break from the longer work, and will take a deep-dive into many aspects of the craft of writing. Every so often, assuming enough people are interested, I’ll host write-along sessions on Zoom. I also hope to feature occasional guest posts from writers I admire.
There will be free content and paid content; I hope you will become a paid subscriber and support me in my work. If you do, I will be forever grateful, and can promise you some worthwhile bonus content as we develop Angel Fall together. What I want to give you, beyond Angel Fall, is a set of resources that can inform your own craft and process.
In today’s bonus post, I Know What I Know, I discuss how a character’s life experience naturally affects their view of the narrative world.
Let’s talk about the novel!
Our first task, beginning with the next post, will be the initial stages of development of the aforementioned literary dystopian novel.
Angel Fall will be set in the far future, many generations after our moon suffered a massive impact event from an interstallar object. The impact created a vast debris field. Wave after wave of fiery rocks pelted the world below, devastating human civilisation. While the remaining debris settled into decaying orbit around the Earth, a long winter descended on the decimated population below. Our story begins in the thaw which follows, and concerns a boy named Scar (our first-person narrator - his name comes from the burn scars on his left arm and face, which he suffered as a baby), a girl named Clarity, and an old fellow called Nope, who is the purported wise man of their community (or burb, as it is called in the parlance of the day).
Angel Fall is a story of trust and betrayal, loss and savage vengeance, and unrequited love. It involves a journey, a panoply of characters, and great danger. It is an adventure, a lesson, a mystery. Most of all, I hope it will be a relevant and important work.
But why call it Angel Fall, you might ask?
We’ll find out in the next post, so make sure you subscribe to keep up to date with developments. In upcoming posts, we’ll discuss angels and a legend of the fall, get into the language of Scar and his people, develop the initial premise for the novel, create some mind mapping diagrams - one of my favourite tools, and useful in all stages of a project, whether big or small - and start building the world and creating the characters who’ll populate it. I’ll also have related posts about world building, character development, plotting and story.
Lots to do then, and a lot to look forward to!
Are you ready for this?
Great, then come into the workshop, but make sure you put on your hard hat. The debris field I mentioned earlier, the stuff in decaying orbit around the planet? Well, it’s starting to drag on the atmosphere, and any minute now, it’s going to rain fire.
In the next post, we’ll explore some of the history and backstory for Angel Fall, and in a follow-up post, we’ll talk about the role prejudice can play in a character’s worldview.
Subscribe to keep up with the latest developments, and please feel free to drop a comment below!