Class Description
A literary agent-led workshop focusing on character development, from a marketplace perspective. Be it memoir or fiction, projects that initially capture an agent’s attention most often get rejected because of flat, stock, or unengaging characters. Are you relying on one of the six stock characters we agents see all too often? Do you have sufficient internal conflict on the page without turning your character(s) into clichés? Have you drowned your poor character(s) with description? Wondering how to make your characters more memorable?
In this one-day intensive workshop we will tackle these problems and more; study effective character descriptions and scenes that go much deeper than the words on the page; work on an assortment of character development exercises (including a very telling protagonist Mad Lib type exercise); and use small group critiques and one-on-ones with the instructor to guide the class to really get into the skin of their character(s) so as to write more richly about them.
Important: Students need to have this questionnaire (download by clicking link) in by Thursday, October 17th. Email Word attachments to [email protected], subject line CHARACTER CLASS.
For Class: Bring notepaper to write on, and a laptop, if you’re more comfortable working electronically. Be prepared to have your work critiqued with other members of the class.
Thanks to the excellent literary citizenship of our donors, scholarships are available for all GrubStreet classes. To apply, click the gray "APPLY FOR SCHOLARSHIP" button. In order to be considered for a scholarship, you must complete your application at least one week before the start date of a class. Please await our scholarship committee's decision before registering for the class. We cannot hold spots in classes, so the sooner you apply, the better. Scholarships cannot be applied retroactively.
For more detailed information about GrubStreet scholarships, including how to contribute to scholarship funds for other students, click here.
This class will take place using Zoom videoconferencing. After registering, a yellow Resources tab will appear in this section containing a link to join class. Please note that you will need to be logged into view the Resources tab.
Zoom Participation:
In our experience, the intimate nature of a writing workshop benefits from on-camera participation. Students are of course welcome to turn their camera off whenever they need to, but it is a community norm for cameras to be on most of the time. You can learn more about using Zoom here.
Zoom Accessibility:
You can enable closed captioning at any time during the meeting by clicking the CC button at the bottom of the screen. If you'd like to access the transcript after class, please make sure to let your instructor ahead of time that you'd like a copy.