Writing Stories About Ourselves

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Writing Stories About Ourselves

Offered By

In this course, creative nonfiction writers will explore traditional storytelling methods, especially those which overlap between fiction and memoir.

What you will learn

By looking at examples from a wide range of genres, including film, song, painting—even the theme music for Jaws!—we’ll practice exercising the creative muscle that sees ourselves as characters and the experiences we’ve had as tales. We’ll focus on critical elements, like how to begin a story, what makes for worthy content, the essential use of detail, the strengths and limits of dialogue, the power of the white space. The ultimate goal is for us to become aware of an “audience” when we write, so that the documentation of our lives will begin to resemble a “performance” crafted onto paper rather than a private entry in a journal.

Syllabus – What you will learn from this course

  • Week 1 – What Can We Learn From Fiction?
  • Week 2 – Train Your Eye Like a Filmmaker
  • Week 3 – Opening the Story
  • Week 4 – The Joys and Pitfalls of Dialogue