Mad is not bad – using mental health in your fiction
Date:
With:
Anne Buist
Rating:
ALL
Summary:
You’ve got a great idea for a crime book – just not sure why anyone would do that. No problems…just make the villain mad, right? Wrong…mental illness is diverse and complicated—and should not be a shortcut for dangerous, mad or bad. (Bad) fiction gets mental illness wrong, misses the subtleties and complexities and perpetuates negative stereotypes. This course will focus on the person first, dispelling mental health myths, and provide tools for accurately representing the many ways that our brains and minds can function.
Details
You will learn:
- Getting things straight - the differences between major psychiatric disorders
- Who does what and why – understanding motivation in mental illness
- The importance of a coherent life-time narrative in understanding the character of someone with a trauma background (that leads to mental illness)
- Writing mentally ill characters authentically but empathetically
- What works and doesn’t work in mentally ill characters in fiction including discussion of examples participants bring
About Anne Buist
While on a 2038km walk, Anne (a Professor of Psychiatry) had a literary epiphany and returned to her childhood passion of writing. After 10,000 hours learning the craft, which included 3 novels and 7 novellas of erotic romance suspense under a pseudonym, she went mainstream and now uses her thirty years’ experience in forensic perinatal psychiatry to inform her psychological thrillers.
Writers Victoria acknowledges Heidi Everett for her assistance with the development of the description material around this course.
Venue:
Registration for this event ended on 29 November 2019 - 4:00