Book Club Workshop: Novels by Poets (live classes on Zoom) – pro-rated
Book Club Workshop: Novels by Poets (live classes on Zoom) – pro-rated
9/3/24 update: Registration for the live class is now closed, but registration for the self-paced class remains open. If you'd like to be notified of future Book Club Workshop sessions, please drop me a line and you'll be the first to know :)
Note: This is the live version of the class, with lectures and discussions on Zoom.(For the at-your-own-pace version of the class, click here.)
You’ve honed your skills at dialogue, sensory details, and giving your characters distinct personalities. But how do these elements work together? What do they all add up to, and where are they going? And how do you make a reader care?
In this class, we’ll study structure more broadly, and read and discuss two novels by poets, to find out. (You don’t need to be a poet to participate! This class is for fiction writers and the fiction-writing-curious.)
If you’d prefer to pay over monthly installments, please reach out via the contact page.
Over three months, we’ll concurrently read the novels Monarch by Candice Wuehle and Candelaria by Melissa Lozada-Oliva, comparing their different approaches at essential junctures: opening chapters, early-book exposition, inflection point, late-book exposition, climax, and resolution (that’s denouement for you fancypantses).
Supplementing with info from John Truby’s The Anatomy of Story as well as the different narrative shapes explored in Jane Alison’s Meander, Spiral, Explode, we’ll develop a shared language to identify and explain: What craft choices did each author make and what effects do they have on me as a reader? Once we can identify those causes and effects in these novels, we can develop personal toolkits for outlining our own books.
Here’s the “book club” component: in each class, we’ll discuss our general impressions and observations from the reading, and identify craft choices, their effects, and how they guide our understanding of the relationships between past events and future possibilities in an engaging way.
Here’s the “workshop” component: informed by our readings and discussions, each participant will draft an outline for their own novel, adding and adjusting class by class, with in-class feedback.
Class meets on Zoom every other Tuesday from August 13th through October 22nd, from 7:00 – 8:30 pm Eastern time. Special guests Candice Wuehle and Melissa Lozada-Oliva will attend our final class meeting.
For more info, please see this longer course description.
After signup, you will receive a welcome email with the syllabus and Zoom link.