A class with unlimn-ited potential

Author Bob Balmer will show how little details can have a big effect on a finished story in his Saturday, April 24, workshop hosted by Manzanita’s Hoffman Center for the Arts.

Balmer’s workshop, “The Devil is in the Details,” promises to show participants “how to use details to enliven and limn characters, plots and places.”

Hopefully, the class will also cover what “limn” means*.

Starting at 10 am, the session is designed to give participants ideas of how to use products, quirks and preferences to delineate people and places, like why a character has to wear blue on Tuesdays, or why a city council member always wears red, Calvin Klein socks on Friday and why a town always has a fish fry the last Friday in March.

The Zoom-hosted workshop is an excellent opportunity for those who want to use more show and less tell in their writing to differentiate people and places.

Balmer has an MFA in creative writing from Portland State University and has attended writing workshops at the University of Iowa, Tin House, a Lynda Barry humor writing workshop through Lewis and Clark, sketch writing and improv sessions at Second City Comedy in Chicago and improv and stand up comedy classes at the Brody Theater in Portland.

His work has appeared in The Smithsonian, Golf Illustrated, The Seattle Times, The Seattle Weekly, The Oregonian, The Willamette Week, Oregon Coast Magazine, The Guide and ZYZZYVA.

Along with leading workshops at the Hoffman Center for the Arts, he has facilitated workshops for Write on the Harbor, Write in the Sound, Oregon Writers Colony, Bainbridge Artisan Resource Network and the Sitka Center for Art and Ecology.

There will be suggested but not required pre-workshop readings.

Cost is $45, for more information, go to hoffmanarts.org.

* We can’t leave you in suspense: “limn” means “to depict or describe in painting or words.”