"The Personalised Writing & Editing Workshop with Killer Pig Productions was great. So much learnt listening to Jake and Sam talk about each piece attendees submitted.,  Recurring themes that came up, no matter what the style or genre, were having a sense of place and writing with intention.... Thanks Killer Pig Productions"  Carla Gardner, Broken River Writers

​NEA member and Broken River Writers' convenor Carla Gardner's short story, The Long Winter, has just been published in Wolves - A Short Story Needle in the Hay Collaboration. "Howl at the moon with eight of the best stories by award winning authors from Needle In The Hay". Congratulations, Carla

Broken River Writers very first Discovery Workshop with playwright Gabriel Bergmoser was even better than expected. Gabe is young and full of energy, on the go the entire time, vibrant and funny. 

Discovery Workshops have been set up for local writers and the broader community to enjoy and learn from a variety of Guest Speakers who come, share their story-telling journey, inspire and impart some of their knowledge through a variety of short exercises. 

Gabe chose a variety of exercises to illustrate the plot and character dynamic of conflict. The first exercise was for one half of the room to come up with reasons as to why he should drink the bottle of scotch, while the other side of the room had to come up with reasons for why he shouldn’t drink it. Immediately there was conflict. 

Other workshop activities built on this theme of conflict, setting the scene for the performance of Gabe’s one act play, Heroes, performed brilliantly by Matt Phillips & Blake Stringer. Heroes illustrated the issue of conflict between characters, and the conflict within themselves between what they want and what they need. 

After Heroes there was a discussion with Gabe, Matt & Blake about the play, from inception to recent performances across Victoria and nominations and presentations of a range of awards in the Geelong One Act Play Festival. “Heroes is a complex, extremely well written play by an exceptionally gifted young playwright,” said Bev Lee, who was absolutely rapt she’d decided to come to Broken River Writers first Discovery Workshop.

The next day Matt & Blake performed in Mansfield in the One Act Play Festival where they won Best Production, Best Writing and runner up Best Actor. And since then they’ve also won Best Production and Best Playwright at the Foster One Act Play Festival, with nominations for Best Actor and Best Director!

Big thank you to the Broken River Writers volunteers for coming in early, setting up, preparing supper and packing up after everyone went home. Big thank you also to NEA for hosting the event and auspicing Broken River Writers, and Tomorrow Today for providing the funding. 

Details of the next Broken River Writers Discovery Workshop to be announced once they are finalised.

Carla Gardner

​An Occasional Blog

Broken River Writers are a group of passionate story tellers from the Benalla region seeking to broaden and enrich our story telling horizons and make a difference in our community. To do this we are working under the umbrella of North East Artisans and with the Benalla Library. It doesn’t matter what your preferred genre is, all writers are welcome – among our number there are people who write poetry, science fiction, fantasy, memoirs, romance, horror so on and so forth.

We meet together on the last Wednesday of the month for Writers’ Corner at the Benalla Library, 5-6:30pm, where we chat about life and writing, share what we’re working on, ideas, ask questions, inspire each other, sometimes even learning something new.

Each month we set a theme or prompt of some kind and encourage people to have a go, which you can find on our Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/BrokenRiverWrtiers/  This month we have three different prompts to choose from.  It is hoped that through this exercise we can each choose a piece we’ve written to include in our very own Broken River Writers book of short stories which we hope to publish some time in 2018.

Discovery Workshops are our new project.  These supplement Writers’ Corner meetings by bringing in a variety of Guest Speakers on the 2nd Friday of the month to share their expertise in the art of story-telling, and stretch writers of all levels through a variety of skill building exercises.  During a Discovery Workshop, Guest Speakers will share their journey, inspire and inform, share from their wealth of knowledge and help us improve our story telling skills.

A Discovery Workshop will run for 2-3 hours and look something like this:

• Short welcome by BRW introducing Guest Speaker & other information
• Guest Speaker talks about “story telling journey”
• Guest Speaker introduces first Writing Exercise topic
• 10-15 minutes of creative writing
• 10-15 minutes of reading pieces out to the group (if you want to)
• Supper break & chat
• Guest Speaker introduces second Writing Exercise topic
• 10-15 minutes of creative writing
• 10-15 minutes reading pieces out to the group (if you want to)
• BRW wrap up.
• NB: a 3 hour session means at least 3 Writing Exercises, maybe more or something special, like a one act play.

Genres covered in Discovery Workshops will be as diverse as story-telling itself, which takes on so many different forms – plays, film, oral tradition, poetry, song, illustration, music, memoirs, theatre, journalism, young adults, children's, horror, historical, healing... There will be a small cost of $5 to help us cover the cost of a scrummy supper, and sometimes authors bring their books and do an impromptu signing, so come prepared.

If you know of any story-tellers who might be interested (local or otherwise), or, if you have any particular story-tellers you’d like to hear from, let us know and we’ll add them to our list. Thanks to the Tomorrow Today Foundation we have some funding to pay a small fee and contribute towards travel costs.
 
Our first Discovery Workshop is on Friday 11th August, 6-9pm with playwright Gabriel Bergmoser at North East Artisans, 122 Bridge St, Benalla.
 
A Writers’ Corner for younger writers (under 15) and three Discovery Workshops catering specifically for Children, Teens and Young Adults are also under development.
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Discovery Workshops are sponsored by Broken River Writers, North East Artisans and the Tomorrow Today Foundation.

Please contact Carla Gardner, NE.A Secretary and Events Coordinator/Broken River Writers Coordinator on 57666453 or email northeastartisans@gmail.com subject heading ‘Broken River Writers Discovery Workshops’ if you would like to be involved and for additional information.  





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​An Occasional Blog by Carla Gardner,
August 2017