6-Month Online Short Story Intensive: Starting the Story Collection
$1285
This class is for experienced writers who are dedicated to starting the first draft of a story collection over the course of 6 months. We will have 22 class meetings between January and June, with a two-week break in March/April to focus on generating and revising our work.
Participants should have experience writing stories and familiarity with the elements of literary short fiction including scene, character, conflict, place and some revision. We will study individual stories by authors, read craft essays, and discuss several published collections and how the stories unite to form a book.
This class is specifically designed for writers who are comfortable in a workshop setting. We will be giving and receiving feedback on works in progress at each of our meetings. Students will be expected to workshop their stories four times throughout the intensive.
In addition to the specific goal of starting a collection, the intention of this class is to bring together a group of writers who are actively seeking accountability, community, and a deepening of dedication to their own work.
Class time will be spent on short freewrites, feedback critiques of the cohort’s work, and discussion of craft elements noticed in students’ homework readings. We’ll be studying the work of writers such as Deeshaw Philyaw, Jamel Brinkley, William Trevor, Bryan Washington, Samantha Hunt, Ayşegül Savaş, Lauren Groff, Jonathon Escoffery, and many others.
Participants will be expected to spend a minimum of 8 hours a week on their writing practice, made up of two hours of class time, two hours of reading and responding to classmates’ work, a half-hour of reading for class discussion, and at least four hours of your own writing practice.
The workshop will culminate in a group reading at Literary Arts when participants will share their work in progress with an audience.
General class outline
January – February: Learn Your Process
We will get to know our own process, figure out how we work best, set a schedule. Discussion of methods used to generate new material. Freewriting in and out of class. Shop talk about the central elements of fiction and learning how and when to turn the volume up or down on craft components (e.g. scene vs. summary, narrative distance, interiority vs. omniscience, etc.) depending on what’s best for a story.
February – March: Now Go Write
Let’s take what we’ve learned the first weeks of class and focus on writing and generating new work and growing existing characters and stories.
March – May: Integrate, Relearn & Revise
We’ll begin to integrate some revision strategies as we head into our two-week break. What methods of revision are most successful for you?We’ll also discuss the complexities of an active writing practice: How do we keep generating new work while also revising existing stories?
May – June: Layers of Revision and Publication Options
Discussion will focus on the many layers of the revision process, what to do when you hit a wall with a story, how to think about form and structure during the revision process, and how to figure out when the heck a story is done. Class time will be spent on methods for ordering a collection and locating the inherent theme in your work. Lastly, we’ll talk about what options are for a collection once it’s complete and is ready to find an audience.
Access Program
We want our writing classes and seminars to be accessible to everyone, regardless of income and background. We understand that our tuition structure can present obstacles for some people. Our Access Program offers writing class and seminar tuitions at a reduced rate. Most writing classes have at least one access spot available.
Please apply here for access rate tuition. Contact Susan Moore at susan@literary-arts.org if you have questions.
