Class Description
How do you keep your readers in... SUSPENSE?! This class, taught by a Bram Stoker and International Horror Guild Award-Winning thriller writer, will show you the dark and stormy workings of suspense and tension and fear over a nail-biting 10 weeks, during which we'll read, take apart and study the mechanics of three recent masterworks of mayhem: Comac McCarthy's No Country for Old Men (basis of the Oscar-winning movie!); Leila Slimani's The Perfect Nanny (the thriller that "conquered France" according to The New Yorker!) and Emma Cline's The Girls (one of the most lauded bestsellers of 2016!). We'll look at strategies to invest the everyday with dread, ways to use real events to get under your readers' skin, how to use setting to maximize tension, methods to get your readers to truly care about your characters' fates, and other tools for the building of SUSPENSE! so that you can have your own readers sweating bullets as they compulsively turn pages until dawn. The edge-of-your-seat techniques of SUSPENSE! will be studied not just in the context of these three works, but also in the context of shorter works and screen and TV writing and play writing. Classic works of True Crime writing from authors like Truman Capote will be examined as well. The class will entail in-class writing exercises, and there will be workshopping of students' fiction in each class as well. While this class expands on topics covered in Grub's "SUSPENSE! Part One" class, it is open to anyone with previous workshop experience.
Did you know that we have scholarships available for all GrubStreet classes? To apply, click the "APPLY FOR SCHOLARSHIP" button in the top right corner of this page. In order to be considered for a scholarship, you must complete your scholarship application and await our Scholarship Committee's decision before registering for the class. Scholarships cannot be applied retroactively.
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. Please visit the Resources tab to access the video-conference link.
Zoom Participation:
Students are not required to turn their camera on, but are encouraged to participate any way they feel comfortable through functions such as the live chat, emoji reactions, and unmuting the microphone. Learn more about using Zoom here.
Zoom Accessibility:
We ask that instructors enable closed captioning and send a transcript of the session after class. You can also enable closed captioning at any time during the meeting. If your instructor forgets to send the transcript, just send ’em an email!