Class Description
Over the last twenty years, the market for middle grade and young adults novels has exploded. Yet writing for these age groups is more challenging and complicated than it may seem. How do you know if your young characters are believable? How do you use your own experiences and not sound dated? Where do you even begin? In this workshop, we will discuss basic fiction elements such as characterization, plot, scene-building, and theme and do exercises to develop dynamic kid-oriented characters. We will analyze a published young adult text to study how a novel is put together, and through brainstorming and freewriting, you will begin building a body of work. Participants can expect a warm, positive environment that will encourage sharing. You will leave with a better understanding of the important components in a piece of fiction as well as strategies for using them in your own work. This class is appropriate for beginning and intermediate writers.
*Note: This class will miss Tuesday, August 23rd and will end on August 30th.
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.