Wayson Choy Visits EWC4U in rm. 104

I've been very lucky learn from the notes of professional writers that have reviewed and revised my pieces and given advice that can only be gained from experience. Our most recent visitor was Wayson Choy. I've read The Jade Peony twice for school now, and he's visited once for both times but this time it was much more intimate as there were only three students.
Wayson teaches his own course on writing. I believe the best teachers for writing have written stories themselves and he brought along and did a shortened workshop activity that he uses in his class. The subject of the workshop is narrative voice and what drives it and the story forward. This is also what we've studied in class and voice is important to the short stories we are writing as an assignment. We examined a handful of articles from the New Yorker magazine and focused on the narrative voice and how it enchants a reader; making the reader want to continue and that the best writers can do that within the first couple of sentences (for 5$ a word, I’m sure they make them all count). When it was our turn to do the writing, I learned that I had no trouble creating a voice but ran into trouble with getting to the point of the story. We wrote as ourselves then as characters which we mimicked and got from characters in our lives. It is important to have narrative drive, which is the plot and plot is driven by characters and atmosphere. Having this experience with an accomplished writer who is often credited as being lyrical in his diction, gives us knowledge on what needs to be done in a piece; what needs to be detailed and how it's done.