Class Description
Like building the foundation of a house, great novels and short stories alike need strong, well-thought-out plot structures to craft rich, compelling tales. In this four-week class, students will learn practical strategies on utilizing techniques of layering and depth-building in fiction to create powerful central conflicts and intricately woven storylines and subplots that add complication, tension, and complexity to a story. Taking a layered approach to story building helps writers better organize and understand the narrative hierarchy at work in their story, while deepening character arcs and allowing haunting themes to take shape and emerge.
Each class will be grounded in craft discussions devoted to plot with essays and selections from contemporary literary authors curated to address specific areas of focus. Students will also be expected to share excerpts from their own fiction for on-the-spot feedback. Through in-class exercises, mini group workshops, in-class readings, and discussions of intricately designed short stories and novels from authors like Lauren Groff, Alice Munro, Arundhati Roy, Colson Whitehead, students will learn practical techniques in crafting better plot outlines, subplots, and revision strategies that they can directly apply to their own fiction.
Class Format
This class will take place using Zoom videoconferencing. About 15 minutes before your class is scheduled to begin, you'll receive an email from your instructor with a link to join the class meeting!
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 more detailed information about GrubStreet scholarships, including how to contribute to scholarship funds for other students, click here.
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.