In this news article: Results of ^GunShyMartyr's Workshop on Twisted Stories | ^PoeticWar's Workshop: Ekphrasis | First time you've heard of *Writers-Workshop? This section is for you.

Results of ^GunShyMartyr's Workshop on Twisted Stories

*Writers-Workshop: This was our first workshop and it turned out beautifully: thank you ^GunShyMartyr for doing this with us. Another thank you to our participants, watchers and other supporters.

`Beccalicious: "A lot of the twists seemed to revolve around murderous acts (including my own) There was great potential that with some of the comments taken on board could be developed into some really strong prose pieces.The first workshop has highlighted some elements of prose that were a consistent issue and ones I hope future prose workshops may focus on. The first workshop has highlighted some elements of prose that were a consistent issue and ones I hope future prose workshops may focus on. For me the pieces that stayed in my head were actually those who had some slightly different ideas on how to make their story twisted. This included ~xCamix whose episodic style worked quite effectively, which a great effort for writing in a language that is not her first. *kittyfantastic24 had a rather emotive piece bringing out the true meaning of affection to our pets, and *apocathary chose to place his as a journal entry instead of a deviation, which again provided a desired effect."

`lovetodeviate: "I would like to commend the following people for having taken the time to read the other entries and comment: *CrystalSeeker, *kittyfantastic24, ~xCamix, *RickDanger and ~Valkirie."

Special Mention: ~Valkirie for having done the most critiquing. An example of his critique is the comment he left at `Beccalicious's entry. Good going, ~Valkirie!

And now, the good stuff. ^GunShyMartyr was asked to read all entries, pick his favourites, and critique them. He did pick his favourites and critique them, but he also critiqued ALL of the other entries. I hope you guys know how lucky you are.

You can read all the entries along with ^GunShyMartyr's comments here

^GunShyMartyr's Top Three Picks

Dogma on a Leash by *apocathary - faved by *journalfav here.

Excerpt from critique: "... this is a wonderful story and proves once again that one of your true god given talents is to rant. You have the uncanny ability to capture a foreign voice and run with it while making sure that it remains believable, accessible and, above all, entertaining. You even managed to throw in a very clever play on words in the title that can snap the whole thing into perspective after reading it in a “Oh” moment, a good-Oh moment, that left me with a stupid grin on my face." Read the rest here.

Goodbye Sarah by *kittyfantastic24 - featured in HotLits - The Third!.

Excerpt from critique: "Well done for keeping that twist hidden right up until the last line. Reading it again it’s now so obvious, especially with that line “without praise or reward”, which is typical of sheepdogs. Really well done." Read the rest here.

Red Dress by *Queen-of-Marigold

Excerpt from critique: I had an idea that the ending was going to be something like this but it didn’t matter because you pulled it off very well. You didn’t shove it in my face, or make it a “AH HA FOOLED YOU DIDN’T I” moment, which is one of the best ways to pull off a twist ending. Read the rest here.

^PoeticWar's Workshop: Ekphrasis

^PoeticWar is a wonderful poet and our Poetry GD. His work has been published in several leading literary magazines such as The Rialto, Magma, Smiths Knoll and Stand. He edits the poetry magazine Mimesis.

He has a poetry challenge for us:

EKPHRASIS

^PoeticWar: "I want you to write an ekphrastic poem. *fotoFRIDAY has had a lot of success with prompts in this vein, but this will be a little different.

"Find a piece of art (it can be a sculpture, a painting--any piece of visual art) and write a poem about/based on it. For this, I'd rather you stick to artwork outside of deviantART. Unlike the *fotoFRIDAY prompts, you can't just pluck aspects of the piece out and use them as part of your poem. The artwork as a whole has to feature--think of the poem and its originating piece of art as a kind of symbiosis.

"Now consider viewpoints. Are there characters in the artwork, or even objects/colours/abstract parts that might be considering their surroundings? What are they thinking? To what extent are they aware of their place in artwork, and what is the effect of this? Alternatively, you might be a narrator looking at the artwork, or the narration could be shared by multiple parts.

"Another concern should be form: you must decide what form best matches the content, just as in any other poem, but here there is the added matter of the visual artwork's form. Examine what friction this causes--are there any conflicts generated, or do the forms complement one another?

"When entering and where possible, include a link to the piece of art your poem was prompted by.

"It isn't enough for the poem to simply describe the piece of art; ideally, it must move past it into a realm of its own, only riffing off elements it finds. The best ekphrastic pieces also stand alone, without the reader having to refer to the artwork that inspired it."

Resources on Ekphrasis

Wiki article
Questions asked about Ekphrastic Poetry
Examples of Ekphrastic poems: Musee des Beaux Arts, Poetry Confronting Art

A note from *Writers-Workshop: Here are some rules you must follow:

This is a poetry challenge. This means your entry has to be a poem.
Your poem may have a maximum of 45 lines.
Your poem must be submitted as a new deviation or scrap.
As ^PoeticWar suggested, please try to include a link to the piece of art your poem was inspired by in the artist's comments section.
Please use the resources suggested above, especially if you are not familiar with ekphrastic poetry. Read as much as possible and feel free to do your own research as well.
Give your poem a good edit before you send it in. And, of course, have fun writing!

How to enter:

After submitting your entry as a new deviation or scrap, send us a note with a link to your poem. Include the subject line "EKPHRASIS" in your note. The deadline is midnight December 4, 2007. All times are set for GMT

First time you've heard of *Writers-Workshop? This section is for you.

*Writers-Workshop is a brand new literature community that focuses on the development of a writer. We intend to provide a non-competitive workshop environment on dA, as well as to push good, polished writing over winning prizes or "networking".

Workshops will be conducted every fortnight; prose, poetry and free-for-all sessions will be rotated. As you might have noticed, our first two workshops are being/have been conducted by Literature GDs. The third workshop will also be hosted by a Literature GD - ^StJoan! We'd like to thank the GDs for their support, encouragement and participation!

To learn about our project, try our FAQ section or our launch news article.

Want to know what workshops we have lined up for you? Read our list of upcoming workshops.

Take part in `GeneratingHype's poll: Which of these dialogue "rules" have you heard?. `GeneratingHype will be conducting a workshop on dialogue in the next prose workshop. So keep a lookout for more polls and forum threads dealing with dialogue; they will lead up to the workshop exercise on January 2, 2008.

Staff