MORNING WORKSHOPS
Where to Begin?: How to Craft a Compelling Opening by Louisa Brady
What makes an effective opening in a short story, a novella, or a novel? How soon should we understand the stakes of the story? How can we efficiently introduce our characters and make them memorable but not archetypal? In this generative workshop, we will perform close readings on three different pieces of fiction from writers such as Shirley Jackson, Kazuo Ishiguro, Ling Ma, and others and discuss how these writers craft strong openings that pull the reader in. Students will do imitation exercises, pulling from the model texts to jumpstart a new story or novel opening, especially one they’ve had bouncing around in their heads but aren’t sure how to begin.
Hermit Crab Forms by Shraya Singh
In this workshop session, students will focus on various types of hermit crab forms by going through lyric essay examples from A Harp in the Stars. We will further discuss popular existent forms (especially more modern forms) that can be used as outlining structures for our own hermit crab essays and discuss the benefits and shortcomings of the various forms through examples. The second part of class will include some time for students to choose from some select hermit crab forms and do a short writing activity based off of the form that they have selected. Ideally, the students should come in with at least a page of prose or an idea that they would then be able to use as the content for their chosen hermit crab form. The end of the session would be reserved for sharing feedback on how the hermit crab essay went or some particular ideas that students might want to work with in the future.
Autofiction (Fictionalized Autobiography) by Ryan Peed
When a lived experience has enough narrative potential, the writer may wish to keep things mostly where they are. In these instances, how might techniques of fiction be used to maximize emotional potency, or universalize a character or situation? How might tinkering with the truth reveal something truer? In this workshop, attendees will examine different examples of autofiction—Justin Torres’ We The Animals and Leslie Blanco’s short story “A Ravishing Sun”—alongside the authors’ statements on their approaches to fictionalizing lived experiences. Then, over the course of three short writing activities, attendees will generate a flash fiction story (or the beginnings of a longer piece) by conflating two lived experiences. During the first two writing activities (ten minutes each), attendees will write about two separate lived experiences, keeping as close to the truth as possible. Then, using a bit of ingenuity and creativity, attendees will bridge the gaps between these two narratives, using fiction to solve logistical problems, amplify feeling, slow down time, etc. For twenty minutes, attendees will craft this new story, unearthing possibilities of meaning through the conflation and alteration of lived experiences. Then, for the remaining time (twenty to thirty minutes), the group will discuss volunteers’ works and any ideas/inspiration generated in the process.
Syntax in Poetry: There Are No Rules! (?) by Karen Zheng
Syntax, or the standard rules that involve how a sentence is arranged in English, is important to the teaching of the English language and also important in communicating with others. However, I believe there are no rules in poetry, especially grammar ones (with some exceptions, of course, characteristic of English). In this generative workshop, we’ll learn to understand syntax and how grammar wants us to write, and we will promptly break all syntactical conventions. Through writing exercises and poetry discussions, we will be producing work with “experimental” syntax that brings out a different set of semantics.
AFTERNOON WORKSHOPS
The Logic of Dreams: Surrealist Poetry by Malcom Mitchell
Dreams appear everywhere in literature and film, but they usually serve as heavy-handed metaphors, transparent plastic bags into which a writer drops a theme or revelation for his reader to discover. We know from our own dreams that the unconscious is never this simple: it replaces one thing with its opposite, splits the singular into the multiple, merges the multiple into the singular. What makes a dream exciting isn’t that it contains hidden meaning, but the particular way meaning sneaks and gallops through the dream. In this workshop, we will write poems that move the way the unconscious moves, liberated from rational control and social constraint. We will practice various automatic writing exercises invented by early French surrealist poets, and learn how to incorporate the subconscious into our writing process.
Plotting The Horror Story by Leah Fretwell
How do writers craft fear? In this workshop, we will talk about how horror stories are structured and why plot, pacing, and power are essential elements in creating fear in the audience. We will use Todorov’s Five Stages of Plot and Octavia Butler’s “Bloodchild” to illustrate how writers can use the exchange of power to structure horror fiction. Participants will plot and write a short horror scene using Todorov and Butler as guides.
Science, Research and Creative Writing by Gaddiel Rivera
It proposes a dynamic approach that bridges scientific research and the writing process. It offers tools and advice on how to channel research into works of an ecological, technological or science fiction nature through the writing process, rather than directly into the writing itself. It is a way of applying the famous phrase ‘show, don’t tell’ to research for writing, a principle that also addresses the tendency of some texts to over-explain. The creative part of the workshop focuses on doing small research to modify or initiate a storyboard of an existing text or a new one.
Cut Your Darlings by Anthony Sutton
“You have to kill you darlings,” Faulkner advises us so we are not too precious with our drafts. However, what of our drafts that live in a middle-space: not quite “working,” but still full of potential? This multi-genre, revision-based workshop will provide strategies for audacious recycling and reinvention including cut-ups, self-erasure, and splicing our drafts with language from unexpected sources, returning anew to the initial spark that got us writing these pieces in the first place.