The Saturday Writers’ Clinic for March features authors Bill Loehfelm, who will discuss how to create and sustain suspense and tension, and James Nolan, who will focus on point of view and explain the popular concept of “third person close.”

Loehfelm will make his presentation at 9:30 a.m., followed by Nolan at 11 a.m., on Saturday, March 21, at the East Bank Regional Library, 4747 W. Napoleon, Metairie.

This event is free of charge and is open to the public. There is no registration.

9:30 a.m., Saturday March 21, 2020
Bill Loehfelm, “Creating Tension”

According to Loehfelm, suspense writing is a matter of setting reader expectations by controlling information—how much to reveal, and when and how to reveal it.

During his presentation, Loehfelm will discuss the following concepts.
• Conflict and the need to create credible heroes and villains.
• Using short sentences.
• Atmosphere and pacing.
• The concept of foreshadowing.
• Plot complications to create dilemmas.
• Unpredictability, including red herrings.

Bill Loehfelm is the author of the critically-acclaimed Devil series about New Orleans Police Department rookie Maureen Coughlin, featuring the novels, Let the Devil Out (a Boston Globe Year's Best for 2016), Doing the Devil’s Work, The Devil in Her Way, and The Devil She Knows. He is also the author of the stand-alone novels, Fresh Kills and Bloodroot, set in his hometown of Staten Island. His short fiction and non-fiction have appeared in several anthologies. He lives in New Orleans with his wife, AC Lambeth, a writer and yoga instructor, and their dog. He plays drums in a rock-'n-'roll band.

11 a.m., Saturday March 21, 2020
James Nolan, “Point of View”

According to James Nolan, point of view is the angle of considering things, which shows us the opinion or feelings of the individuals involved in a situation. He says that in literature, point of view is the mode of narration that an author employs to let the readers “hear” and “see” what takes place in a story, poem, or essay.

During this presentation, Nolan will discuss the main types of point of view, and he will spend time discussing a popular point of view in use by authors today – third person close.

James Nolan is a fifth-generation New Orleans native, and his twelfth book, Nasty Water: Collected New Orleans Poems, is a companion volume to Flight Risk: Memoirs of a New Orleans Bad Boy, which won the 2018 Next-Generation Indie Book Award for Best Memoir. His fiction includes You Don’t Know Me: New and Selected Stories (winner of the 2015 Independent Publishers Gold Medal in Southern Fiction) and the novel Higher Ground (awarded a Faulkner/Wisdom Gold Medal).

For more information regarding this event, contact Chris Smith, Manager of Adult Programming for the library, at 504-889-8143 or wcsmith@jefferson.lib.la.us.