2025-05: WRITING WORKSHOP - Nailing Your Opening Pages (Bianca Marais)

Join us for our new 3-part series - The Heliconian Writing Workshops

Registrants may register for all three parts using the available subscription model or may register for one or more of the individual events, which are detailed below.

 Individual Workshop Cost: $45 for members, $55 for non-members (Includes HST)
*Member registration opens January 1, 2025. Priority to members until Jan 31.
*Non-member registration opens February 1, 2025
 Whole 3-Workshop Series Cost: $120 for members, $150 for non-members (Includes HST)

Nailing Your Opening Pages with Bianca Marais

Friday, May 16, 2025, 1:00 - 4:00 PM (Prose writers at all levels welcome)

Readers' attention spans are shorter than ever. If you don't grab and hold their attention within the first few pages, you've already lost them. The same goes for literary agents looking for submissions that grip them from the very first paragraph.

There's so much heavy lifting your opening pages need to do in terms of:

• Setting the tone
• Introducing the kinds of characters that readers want to go on a journey with
• Establishing pacing
• Creating tension
• Setting up worldbuilding
• Tipping the dominoes with a story-forward plot
• Making the reader actively curious

Learn how to hook your readers through masterful storytelling, and what pitfalls to avoid. This session is participatory, involving prompt-based writing.

Bianca Marais is the author of the bestselling The Witches of Moonshyne Manor as well as the beloved Hum If You Don't Know the Words, If You Want to Make God Laugh, and the Audible Original The Prynne Viper. She taught at the University of Toronto's School of Continuing Studies where she was awarded an Excellence in Teaching Award for Creative Writing. She’s the co-host of the popular podcast, The Shit No One Tells You About Writing, which is aimed at helping emerging writers become published. Her forthcoming novel, A Most Puzzling Murder, will be out in April 2025. (Photo Credit: Brendan Fisher)