Description
This class is part of our “Summer Novel Series,” a variety of single-session classes on Thursday evenings designed to tackle one element of novel writing in each class. You can take one class, pick and choose, or take all of them! You can find all other classes in the series here.
At the root of every story is an underlying drama about power. Who has it? Who doesn’t? What is done to get it? What is done by those who have it, and what is done by those who don’t? Those crucial and often subtle elements are the machinery of a powerful, evocative, and enduring fiction.
In this course, we’ll examine the internal and external mechanisms of potential power undergirding works of our favorite writers in order to learn techniques for crafting inspired, propulsive, character-driven plots. We’ll deconstruct, map, and align the unique, layered psychological and sociological dynamics of characters to generate the velocity from which character motivation, action, and the causal-chain locomotion of plot emerges. Using these techniques, we’ll experiment with short exercises that will enrich your writing.
