Theresa Hottel - Read and practice writing fiction or dramatic writing with imaginative concepts.
- Deepen theoretical knowledge of character, structure, setting, and pov, and how these present unique challenges and opportunities when working with the unreal or surreal.
- Learn to read like an editor: noticing creative choices in a work, including how they affect a text and how they could be adjusted.
- Gain feedback on work in progress and craft a portfolio of narrative design elements.
This 8-week intensive is ideal for students who want to break, bend, or play with the rules of reality while crafting satisfying, technically elegant fiction or narratives. We’ll study and write about the futuristic, uncanny, magical, and speculative, and how these elements mesh with our individual writing goals, from surreal, ghostly short stories to detailed epic fantasy novels.
We’ll analyze published works of Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror from a writer’s standpoint: what effect did this have on me, and how did the writer create this effect? What draws us to these genres? How can we create work that is compelling, original, artful, and fun?
Through discussion, theory readings, and writing exercises, we’ll examine topics and challenges that are unique and inherent to imaginative writing, for example, Worldbuilding, the mechanics of writing Magic, Hero/Villain relationships, fight scenes, describing the unreal, and the challenge of creating suspense and stakes within a narrative environment with which readers are unfamiliar. We’ll also examine traditional fiction elements like POV, Character, Plot, and Structure from the perspective of a writer working with unreal elements.
The heart of the class is the workshop: every student will have at least 2 opportunities to submit original work for feedback from the class. Students will also build a portfolio of exercises designed to help them dig more deeply into their particular created worlds, characters, and imaginative premises.
