Online Class
Lighthouse Lit Fest Advanced Weeklong Fiction Workshop: The Arc Of Story, The Architecture Of Plot With Rebecca Makkai
Lighthouse Writers Workshop 3844 York St, Denver, CO, United StatesNo one’s ever going to force you to write a traditional plot arc, but the tools of narrative momentum—cause and effect, development, change, stakes, suspense—should be in every writer’s tool kit, if only so we know what to rebel against. We'll workshop student fiction in this light—focusing on arc, on shape, on plot or the […]
Lighthouse Lit Fest: Interiority Complex
Lighthouse Writers Workshop 3844 York St, Denver, CO, United StatesThe great advantage of prose (over theater, film, and life) is that we’re privy to characters’ interior states. But how can a writer get thoughts and emotions across, other than by stating them flat-out or by updating us constantly on breathing and heart rate? We’ll explore ways to use tangent, gesture, backstory, action, association, and […]
Hugo House Workshop: “Blind Date”
Hugo House 1634 11th Avenue , Seattle, WAThis brainstorming workshop will explore the alchemy of combining seemingly disparate concepts into one narrative. We’ll each take our own unused, unloved ideas and, after we discuss the fine art of narrative matchmaking, set them up together for a lifetime of happiness—or at least a few paragraphs of fun. In addition to something to write […]
Speakeasy Workshop: Reading Like A Writer
Wednesdays September 8th, 15th, 22nd, and 29th join me to learn to read like a writer. In this discussion- and lecture-based class, we'll use short assigned texts to become stronger and more engaging writers. This workshop has four sessions. We tend to read as readers and then write as writers, missing out on many of the craft […]
Speakeasy Workshop: Reading Like A Writer
Wednesdays September 8th, 15th, 22nd, and 29th join me to learn to read like a writer. In this discussion- and lecture-based class, we'll use short assigned texts to become stronger and more engaging writers. This workshop has four sessions. We tend to read as readers and then write as writers, missing out on many of the craft […]
Speakeasy Workshop: Reading Like A Writer
Wednesdays September 8th, 15th, 22nd, and 29th join me to learn to read like a writer. In this discussion- and lecture-based class, we'll use short assigned texts to become stronger and more engaging writers. This workshop has four sessions. We tend to read as readers and then write as writers, missing out on many of the craft […]
Speakeasy Workshop: Reading Like A Writer
Wednesdays September 8th, 15th, 22nd, and 29th join me to learn to read like a writer. In this discussion- and lecture-based class, we'll use short assigned texts to become stronger and more engaging writers. This workshop has four sessions. We tend to read as readers and then write as writers, missing out on many of the craft […]
The Porch: The Origins of the Original with Visiting Writer Rebecca Makkai
OnlineWhen we sit down to write, the first words, scenes, characters, conflicts, and settings we come up with are often the least original ones of which we’re capable. Digging past the obvious, the stock (and even the products of the collective unconscious), we might finally arrive at stories that are strikingly new and memorable. In […]
WORDPLAY CLASS: First Page, Last Polish (part of The Loft’s Wordplay festival)
OnlineYour opening is the first thing an agent or editor will read—and you don’t want it to be the last. But you’ve seen your own first page so often that its strengths, flaws, gaps, and even typos are invisible to you now. So often, all we can think to do to polish it up is […]
