Going Baroque: Find the Climactic Moment in Your Story

About the Workshop

Going Baroque: Find the Climactic Moment in Your Story Date: Saturday November (depending on interest) Location: The Getty Center, Los Angeles Price: TBD, with discounts for the TSL community and TSLWorkshops members! Admission: The Getty is free, but you need to get tickets in advance Parking: $25 Lunch: Together in the garden; bring your own or buy it at the café Class size: Ten-twelve writers Who it's for: Writers at all levels, in any genre or format This workshop is about being inspired by the narrative in Baroque art in order to find the narrative in your own. Seeing and experiencing a story visually can help you get closer to your own visual, emotional, climactic action, with main characters who have agency. Most Baroque art was built to make you feel something and believe something, especially Italian Baroque. THE WORKSHOP It’s a focused day. We'll look at art together as a group (fingers crossed I can get a docent to talk through the art with us). Then we will move through guided and directed writing exercises, both about the art and about your own story. We'll end the day sharing our work and our experience, with every writer getting a response from me (optional), and you'll get to connect with other real-life writers at the beautiful Getty. BAROQUE PERIOD The Baroque period was about 1600 to 1750. It started in Rome around the 1590s and hit its stride in the 1600s. Italian artists include Artemisia Gentileschi, Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Guido Reni, and Elisabetta Sirani. Baroque art is like a high-stakes action/psychological thriller/horror movie from the 17th century. It's dramatic, gritty, and lit like a crime scene. It's action, conflict, an emotional stab. It captures the story at the climactic moment. Mostly tragic. Some artists show the before, the choice, or the aftermath. But none better than Artemisia Gentileschi, who subverted the accepted way to paint religious and mythological stories. Unlike the women in a lot of paintings from the time, hers don't wait for the story to happen to them. They aren't just holding the sword, they're wielding it. She shows us the choice, the plan, the climactic action. She's a badass! Let’s be bad ass story tellers in our writing like Gentileschi!