WSP 34 — Writing Compelling Characters
Summer
Saturdays
10:00 am—4:00 pm
Date(s)
Jul 11—Jul 18
2 days
Drop By
Jul 4
1 Units
Fees
$245
Limit
21
Open
“The story is always in service to the characters, and is only as long or short, or neat or ragged as it
needs to be,” Stewart O’Nan once said. The character-driven short story aims to give readers a brief but searching glimpse into what it means to be human, exploring the complexity of the mind and the predicaments people create for themselves and others. In this course, in-class writing assignments will help students create and refine characters and explore how conflicting desires—both internal and external—can propel plots and shape story structures. We will read selections of published fiction by Jamaica Kincaid, Alice Munro, Joan Silber, Justin Torres, and others to consider how the ghosts of the past influence characters’ actions in the present, how characters grow (or don’t) over the course of a story, how the choice of point of view affects readers’ understanding of characters, and how dialogue can move a story forward. Each student will have the opportunity to complete a take-home writing exercise for workshopping in small groups on the second Saturday. By the end of the workshop, students will have learned a variety of strategies for deepening their characters and enriching their stories.
Ron Nyren, Former Stegner Fellow, Stanford
Ron Nyren’s fiction has appeared in The Paris Review, The Missouri Review, The North American Review, Glimmer Train Stories, Mississippi Review, and elsewhere. He is the co-author of Deepening Fiction: A Practical Guide for Intermediate and Advanced Writers and a former editor of Furious Fictions: The Magazine of Short-Short Stories. Nyren received an MFA in creative writing from the University of Michigan.Textbooks for this course:
No required textbooks