Craft Intensive: The Interior Lives of Characters

Fiction allows readers an intimate experience by immersing them in a character’s inner world of fantasies, fears, and desires. How do we writers convey this on the page? How do we share our characters’ rich interior life in a way that is natural? Your characters’ interiority is what makes them unique and what readers connect with. And it is one of a fiction writer’s most difficult tasks.

In this course, we will go over the essentials of character interiority, and explore tools and techniques to express your characters’ thoughts and emotions to reveal their perspective, worldview, and goals. Each week, we will explore a different aspect of interiority––including narrative, tension, point of view, and backstory. We will explore published works of authors with richly developed characters, including such authors as Ann Napolitano, Jacqueline Woodson, Ocean Vuong, and Andrew Sean Greer. At the end of each week, we’ll do a short exercise to get into the heads of our characters. You will have the opportunity to workshop one full scene with the entire class.

By the end of class, you will not only have a more fully developed sense of the interior lives of your own characters, you will have the tools to convey those lives as effectively as possible.

This class will appeal to intermediate-advanced writers or those with an active work in progress in any genre of fiction.

Class Format

This is an Online: On-Demand class that will take place on our asynchronous online learning platform, Wet.Ink. Weekly lessons and assignments open each Wednesday. Students will receive an invitation to Wet Ink before 5pm on the first day of class!

*NOTE that while our handy dandy "Schedule" tab states a 6-7pm class time, there are actually no live meetings for this class! Weekly lessons and assignments open each Wednesday. Students will receive an invitation to Wet Ink, our online class platform, before 5pm on the first day of class.

Scholarship Information

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.