Writing Boorloo: What Lies Beneath with Michelle Johnston

No matter what we write, we are grounded. Setting is part of the holy trinity of immersive writing, along with character and plot. Readers need to know, to feel, where the story takes place. My first two novels drew deeply from the well of setting, both here in the Boorloo (in the labyrinthine catacombs of Royal Perth Hospital in Tiny Uncertain Miracles), and in the dire mines of Wittenoom during its hideous heyday, in Dustfall. Well-written settings become almost like characters themselves. In this workshop we will explore these foundations of writing, the basis on which our characters move through their story. We will discover that content is often inextricable from technique – that the how of writing is married to what we are writing. We will revel in divine examples of those writers who use setting beautifully, and we will have some fun with a few exercises. How well do we know the ground below our feet?

About the Presenter

Dr Michelle Johnston is an author (Dustfall, UWAP 2018, Tiny Uncertain Miracles, HarperCollins Fourth Estate, 2022) and Emergency Physician. On a good day it is difficult to tell the difference. She is passionate about teaching – both medicine and writing – and worships at the altar of the great sentence. Her third novel – The Revisionists, about the power of language and memory to reshape the past – is coming out with HarperCollins in July 2025.

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