How to Write A Short Story in Four Weeks
Thursdays, June 8th-29th, 6-8pm
$200 for four sessions or $55/single session
You can register for all four weeks, or each week individually.
Are you a storyteller at the dinner table, a keeper of private journals, a chronicler in morning pages? Maybe you’re someone who used to write, who writes a first page and doesn’t know where to go next, who’s never written but always wanted to, who has untold stories burning inside your chest.
This workshop is for fiction and nonfiction writers at all stages of experience. Over four weeks, I’ll lead you through the process of writing a short story from inspiration to revision. We’ll study the bones of storytelling, whether the stories are from our lives or something we made up. We’ll create characters, build real and imagined worlds, plot narratives, and hone our styles.
Each session will focus on a different part of the writing process or an aspect of craft. I’ll offer you instruction, models from published works, as well as prompts to develop your story, to unlock your own voice, to find your subject and style. Each participant will have a chance to read some of their writing aloud and to hear generative feedback, if they choose.
You’ll leave each session with drafted material, tools for developing the story, and inspiration to keep creating. No writing experience necessary.
Please note: participants can write by computer or by hand.
Session 1: Beginnings—
- Finding inspiration from memory, choosing a point of view, writing the first sentence.
- Silencing our inner critics.
- Listening to the whispers of a narrative voice.
Session 2: Middles—People, Places and Things
- Writing about Objects—symbols and metaphors in writing.
- Crafting Character—whose story is this and what’s at stake?
- Writing Place—where are we?
Session 3: Middles---Scenes and Structures
- Showing and telling our stories.
- Thresholds—writing moments of Change.
- Pattern and Design in Narrative—finding form for our stories.
Session 4: Endings and Revision--
- Re-seeing our writing and the shape of our material.
- Fostering a Writing Practice.
- Honing our styles and language.