Class Description
“The need for mystery,” wrote Ken Kesey, “is greater than the need for an answer.” A sense of mystery is fundamental to storytelling. This one-day workshop will teach you all the important craft elements of how to create and sustain mystery in fiction. We will start by discussing classic works of mystery, including the Sherlock Holmes stories and the work of Edgar Allan Poe, and then move on to uses of mystery in contemporary literary fiction. Through a series of fun, directed writing exercises, you will apply the maneuvers of good mystery to your own writing. By the end of class, you’ll learn how to avoid mundane, predictable characters and plots by using the techniques of mystery to drive your storytelling process. Writing notebooks will be available, but feel free to bring your own. For writers age 13 - 18 ONLY.
Join GrubStreet’s Young Adult Writers Program (YAWP), a FREE creative writing workshop for Boston-area high schoolers. Our students come from a wide variety of high schools in the Boston area and enjoy cool writing exercises, mingling with fellow young writers, snacks, and an optional open mic. After four great years, YAWP has already been recognized by the Boston Globe as Boston's hub for writing teenagers. You must be 13-18 years to register.
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.