Begins Wednesday, February 19th, 2025

The class will meet weekly via Zoom on Wednesdays, 7PM – 9PM Eastern

The magic of good storytelling isn’t magic at all. It’s about digging deep and staying authentic. It’s hard work and it’s thrilling.

In this course you will learn the basics of compelling storytelling: knowing how to communicate and listen on the deepest levels; character development, crafting cinematic scenes with mood, detail, description and dialogue. Ultimately, you will learn to trust your “voice” which sounds confusing but is simply letting your words and thoughts spill out onto the page in the way you think and speak.

Whether you are a novice or an advanced writer who is pursuing the never-ending process of honing your skills, this is a course for you.

Course texts: Stephen King’s “On Writing” – Joan Didion’s “Year of Magical Thinking”

COURSE OUTLINE:

• Week 1 Focus: Learning how to interview by asking each other the tough questions that can make or break a story.
• Week 2 Focus: How to develop compelling (three dimensional) characters.
• Week 3 Focus: The power of “show don’t tell” using detail and dialogue to make your stories come to life.
• Week 4 Focus: The beauty of tight writing. Paring down rambling sentences adds punch to any story.
• Week 5 Focus: Short writing exercises and reading your writing for clarity and cadence.
• Week 6 Focus: Learning how to trust yourself and take risks with your writing.

COURSE TAKEAWAYS:

• Gain the ability to delve deeper into people and subject matter
• Learn how to use “color” to spruce up their writing
• Be more skilled at writing shorter and more powerful sentences
• Produce short stories and gain the confidence to put your work out there.