Class Description
Course Description:
Are you getting enough irony in your diet? We often write about painful subjects when we're still responding to them emotionally, but by getting some distance on difficult events like a break-up or the death of a loved one, we can make our stories more interesting, and perhaps even amusing, to readers. Fiction and nonfiction authors like Lorrie Moore, Jamaica Kincaid, and David Sedaris will show us how to use narrative techniques such as tone, plot, dialogue, and the telling detail to find the funny in failure, the laughter in loss. We'll use prompts to generate promising scenarios of our own and then workshop them together to make sure they're fresh and unexpected.
Takeaways:
By the end of class, you'll have created an outline and the first scene of a story that will keep your audience balanced between crying and cry-laughing.
Who Should Register?
For high school writers age 13 - 18 ONLY. Writing notebooks will be available, but feel free to bring your own.
*If you are registering on behalf of your teen, add their email information in the “For a Friend or Child?” field on the right-hand side of the screen before you check out. This will send them a direct link and reminder to create their own profile with GrubStreet.
(After adding the class to your cart, click "Checkout" and click “Add” next to “For a Friend or Child?” on the right-hand side to fill in their email. This is an easy way of linking the class to your child and encourages them to create their own account.)
Parents/guardians must also complete this permission form online before the start of the class.
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.