**CANCELLED** Harness the power of emotional intelligence to build compelling characters and captivate readers with this hands-on creative session led by Allayne Webster.

Emotional intelligence in a literary sense is the ability to understand what makes other people tick, therefore being able to put yourself in someone else’s shoes to forge relatable and well-rounded characters, as well as helping you to become exquisitely sensitive to the expectations of readers.

But is this a natural talent or can you learn it?

Join Adelaide author Allayne Webster as we take you on a deeper journey into characterisation, voice, point of view and the perception of the world, yours and your characters’, with a specific focus on seeing the world through the lens of a child and teenager, to create books that pull your reader in and demand an emotional response.

Participants will:

• Develop a strong understanding of how to get the reader invested.
• Learn what it takes to pull off convincing characters/story.
• Learn the value of raw, honest prose.
• Explore personal beliefs/prejudices and how these influence their writing.
• Learn to avoid stereotypes/develop unique characters.

The workshop will include practical writing exercises and is for all writers at all levels and all genres however one of the writing exercises will have a YA and children’s focus. If you’re not sure if this is the workshop for you, please get in contact with us at [email protected]. This workshop will be recorded for those who can’t make it on the day but you must register before the closing date to have access to the recording.

—Online events are easy to access! You will need an internet connection and (ideally) a device with a camera – computers/laptops or even phones can be used to dial in. You will be sent a link to join a few days before the event. The link will take you to a private digital meeting where you can join the session. You can test the link at any time to ensure you can log in. Please respect the other participants in your event and mute your microphone at all times while the presenter is presenting. Background noise in houses such as TVs, pets and children can affect the sound quality.

About Allayne Webster

Allayne Webster is an author of Junior Fiction, Middle Grade and Young Adult literature. She’s a SA Premier’s Reading Challenge Ambassador, a recipient of three South Australian arts grants, and she served for ten years on the board of the Salisbury Writers Festival.

Paper Planes (Scholastic) was a 2016 Children’s Book Council of Australia (CBCA) Notable/shortlisted for the Adelaide Festival Awards for Literature, and has since been included in the National Heritage Untapped Project. A Cardboard Palace (MidnightSun) was a 2018 CBCA Notable and published in Sweden. Our Little Secret (Scholastic) was listed for the Golden Inkys. The Centre of My Everything (PenguinRandomHouse) was listed in the 2019 Davitt Awards (crime) and shortlisted in the 2020 Adelaide Festival Awards for Literature. Sensitive (UQP) is published in Russia and was shortlisted in the 2020 Australian Speech Pathology Awards.

Allayne recently released a comedy YA novel That Thing I Did – March 2022 (Wakefield Press). Her YA/MG novel, Selfie will be out 2023 (Text Publishing). When not writing Allayne plays guitar and paints

Members $88 / Non-members $140

This program will be delivered online via Zoom

—Writers SA members must be logged in to receive the member discount. If you are a member of another state based writers centre, please contact [email protected] at least five working days before the event to get a code for the member price. Our staff don’t work full time and we don’t want you to miss out!