Lisa C. Taylor | Writers.com

Writing a Publishable Novel or Story

Elle | Community Manager — Thu, 12 Dec 2024 04:23:41 +0000

How do you write a novel or story that grabs the attention of agents and publishers? How do you navigate the challenges of queries, pitches, and synopses? The answer starts with creating a story that stands out—and the foundation of every truly unforgettable story is its characters.

In this course, you’ll learn how to craft characters that will linger in your readers’ minds long after they turn the last page. These are the stories and characters that agents and editors are eager to publish. Through reading and analyzing a range of works—from flash fiction and short stories to novel excerpts—you’ll discover how successful authors create vivid, relatable characters. We’ll dive into writing exercises designed to deepen your understanding of character motivation, backstory, and development.

You’ll also gain practical insights into the publishing world. Whether your goal is traditional publishing or indie routes, you’ll learn the essentials of writing query letters, crafting synopses, and preparing pitches that will help your novel or story stand out in a competitive market.

By the end of this course, you’ll have a deeper understanding of how to create multidimensional characters, and how to position your story for success in the publishing world. You’ll walk away not just with writing techniques, but with the confidence to bring your story and its unforgettable characters to life—and to the attention of agents and publishers.

Who This Course is For

This course is for fiction writers of all levels. You will benefit from this course whether you’re ready to begin a novel or story, or already have a working draft.

Learning and Writing Goals

Learning Goals

In this course, you will learn to:

Write in scene rather than exposition.
Add in gestures and habits to animate a character.
Write a story with emotional impact and a character arc.
Use original language and take risks with your writing.
Analyze how well-published writers create characters that jump off the page.
Utilize the structure of a story which may include rising action, falling action, and resolution.

Writing Goals

In this course, you will:

Complete various writing exercises to maximize your understanding of what makes fiction successful.
Draft at least two stories or a novel opening.
Learn how to write a query, a synopsis, and a pitch for your novel.

Zoom Schedule

During the six weeks, there will be four optional Zoom sessions held on Tuesdays from 7-8 PM Eastern. The dates for these meetings are February 11th, 18th and 25th, and March 4th.

Weekly Syllabus

Week 1: The Art of Writing in Scene

A Crazy Little Thing Called Love: Writing Original Love Poems

Sean Glatch — Tue, 20 Jun 2023 19:54:36 +0000

In this six-week class, you’ll write about love, creating poems that celebrate all aspects of love, from family love to friendship love to romantic love. And you’ll do it all without depending on trite or overused language.

The greatest love poets, Pablo Neruda, John Keats, and contemporary poets Mark Doty, Kim Addonizio, Stephen Dunn, and Ada Limon write unapologetically about the role love plays in their lives. This class will teach you how to write and revise your poems so they are compelling and original. Whether you are a poetry hobbyist or you’ve always wanted to be a serious writer of poetry, this class will teach you how to use fresh language and images. Love poems can be playful, silly, tender, or erotic. They can be tributes to friends, mentors, children, or lovers.

Through weekly assignments, you will learn how love can be a catalyst in your writing. You will read many compelling love poems from both classic and contemporary writers. Most writers sooner or later write about our universal desire to be loved and to love.

This class is open to writers of all levels and backgrounds. Regular feedback from the instructor is provided as well as peer critiques from your classmates. By the end of the six weeks, you’ll have 6-8 poem drafts and at least 3 revised poems.

Learning and Writing Goals

Learning Goals

In this course, you will learn:

To write your own original love poems.
Poetry craft including sound devices, line breaks and the importance of rhythm (not necessarily rhyme) in poetry.
About odes and elegies (poems of tribute and poems of memorializing the dead).
To demystify the revision process so you can polish your poems.

Writing Goals

In this course, you will write:

Six to eight poems of love or tribute.
Revisions of three poems so they are ready to submit to journals if you choose to publish.
Love poems about diverse people you either know or create (family, friends, acquaintances, famous or historical people).

Note: You need not be in a love relationship to spend six weeks thinking and writing about love! Poetry can also be fiction or fantasy. There are many kinds of love in our lives or in our imagination. Spend six weeks thinking about and writing about the ways love improves our lives.

Zoom Schedule

We will meet on Zoom on Tuesdays from 7-8 U.S. Eastern Time.

Zoom sessions will include a writing “spark” and a mini craft lecture that may include reading and talking about some poems. Questions from the week’s assignment are also welcomed.

Weekly Syllabus

Week One: Love and Poetry

How to Write Character-Driven Stories

Frederick Meyer — Thu, 01 Dec 2022 21:35:31 +0000

Memorable characters stay with us because the characterization becomes the story. A criminal may commit a crime, but his or her peculiarities are what make a reader remember. When a character lies, loves, grieves, or behaves badly, it is up to us, as writers, to animate the character in such a way that a reader feels the pain, anger, or love. Characters are what characters do.

In this interactive, generative course, you’ll learn how to let a character inhabit you—live in your body—and drive forward the story you want to tell. You’ll gain a better understanding of the role of characters in fiction, and learn to create fully developed characters that make your readers cheer, cry, rage, and exclaim.

We will explore many stories, from flash fiction to short stories, each with remarkable and memorable characters. We will trace a line through them, seeing how, in each case, character drives story. By the end of the course, you will have drafted two full, character-driven short stories.

Come and hang out with the truly odd characters that live in your imagination, and learn how to bring them to life on the page.

Learning and Writing Goals

This class is designed for any skill level. The exercises and readings have been chosen to maximize your understanding of character in fiction so you can find and write your own character-driven stories.

You will learn:

To write and animate a unique character.
To write in scene rather than exposition.
To use gestures and habits in character development.
To write a story that has emotional impact and an arc.
To use original language and take risks with your writing.
To learn about characterization from well-published contemporary writers whose characters jump off the page.
To be welcomed into a larger community of writers, learning opportunities for sharing your stories.

Students will have written at least two short stories by the end of this course.

Throughout this class, students will be expected to write, respond to the writing of peers, and revise for sharing. Students will also respond to the assigned readings.

Zoom Schedule

This course will meet on Zoom for approximately one hour every Tuesday at 7 P.M. U.S. Eastern Time.

Weekly Syllabus

Week 1: The Art of Animating a Character

You meet characters at the post office, the grocery store, at a traffic light. How you can breathe life into these strangers?

Assignment: Create a character sketch (in words) from basic observations in a place you know (coffee shop, laundromat, park).

Week 2: Bad Behavior makes Good Fiction!

The characters that inhabit stories are flawed. They walk into complications regularly. Your job is not to make life easy for them.

Assignment: Write a story with your character encountering an obstacle to something he/she/they want. The obstacle can be literal (a failed job interview, a break-up, a car accident) or intangible (recognition, fame, love). First Story Due.

Week 3: Gestures and Habits, Reputation and Rumor

Characters are what characters do. His nervous tic, the way she twists her ring, their penchant for arranging socks by color, all tell a reader something about a character. How they speak implies how they feel. For example, telling someone you’ve heard all about them upon your first meeting can mean you’ve looked forward to meeting them or you are pre-judging them because they have a reputation.

Assignment: Write a scene in your story showing a habit or gesture your character uses under stress.

Week 4: Lies, Deceptions, False Impressions, and Endearments

What does your character hide? What deceptions drive your story. Does your character utter endearments while carrying on a secret other life?

Assignment: Write a story that reveals something hidden about your character and drives the story to an unexpected place.

Week 5: Stereotypes, Non-Conformists, Unreliable Narrators

Can we trust your character? Is he/she/they quirky, unpredictable, or too predictable?

Assignment: Write a scene or story in the first person (I) using the skills you’ve learned. Make your narrator seem to be telling the truth until you throw the reader a few breadcrumbs indicating it may not be entirely true. Second story due.

Week 6: Wrapping up: Telling the Story

Using what you’ve learned from these weeks and the assigned readings, put together a story (can be flash fiction or a full short story of up to 3,000 words). Make sure your narrator is well-developed, unpredictable, and there are enough surprises to move the story along. Final story (can be a revision of one of the stories you’ve written thus far) is due—up to 3,000 words.

Resources:

The Elevator by Karen Bender https://www.guernicamag.com/the-elevator/

Last Night by Laura Van Den Berg https://electricliterature.com/a-new-short-story-by-laura-van-den-berg-about-the-survivors-guilt-of-the-suicidal/

The Village by Antonya Nelson https://www.triquarterly.org/issues/issue-138/village

Gideon by ZZ Packer https://www.theguardian.com/books/2007/oct/06/featuresreviews.guardianreview32

Eleven by Sandra Cisneros https://genius.com/Sandra-cisneros-eleven-annotated

Every Piece of Ivory a Dead Elephant by Geraldine Mills

Bleeding Boy by Alan McMonagle https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/bleeding-boy-a-short-story-by-alan-mcmonagle-1.2419952

Why Take a Character-Driven Fiction Course with Writers.com?

We welcome writers of all backgrounds and experience levels, and we are here for one reason: to support you on your writing journey.
Small groups keep our online writing courses lively and intimate.
Work through your weekly lectures, course materials, and writing assignments at your own pace.
Share and discuss your work with fellow writers in a supportive course environment.
Award-winning instructor Lisa C. Taylor will offer you direct, personal feedback and suggestions on every assignment you submit.

Notify me when this course is scheduled

The post How to Write Character-Driven Stories appeared first on Writers.com.

Death Riding Shotgun: How Awareness of Our Mortality Impacts Poetry

Frederick Meyer — Sat, 17 Sep 2022 23:38:25 +0000

How do writers grapple with the reality of our limited time on this planet? Is there a way to write about loss that isn’t overwrought or depressing? Many writers have taken on death either by exploring a personal loss or creating a sense of urgency that comes from knowing that the future is uncertain for all of us. While you may be thinking that this is a topic you’d rather not consider, it can give your poetry a new dimension. Some cultures honor those who went before us. Galway Kinnell in his wonderful poem Oatmeal talks about having breakfast with mentors now deceased. Surely our culture can do a better job bringing the end of life into the open, and celebrating each life stage in our writing.

How can your own mortality inform your work? In this class, we will read and discuss poems that deal with mortality while understanding that mortality, for a writer, is always present—looking in the window or darting across the road in front of us. Does an awareness of death make our work more alive? Are there ways to write about death that aren’t poems of loss and grief? We will be reading some unconventional poems and also writing our own poems. Poems of death are, in a sense, poems of life at its most visceral, acutely aware state. They can also be poems of celebration.

Samples of poems and stories that look at death from all different angles will be provided. The poet, Federico Garcia Lorca came up with the concept of Duende. He wrote “In every other country death is an ending. It appears and they close the curtains. Not in Spain. In Spain they open them. Many Spaniards live indoors till the day they die and are carried into the sun” Duende is the dark note and the sweet. It is a beautiful wound that never heals. Let us consider the many beginnings that can come out of this awareness.

This will be an interactive and writing-intensive class. There will also be humor and playfulness. Poetry is a multi-layered form of writing. The literal layer of a poem can tell a story, while the figurative creates images in our mind to support the story or observation. Poems can also have a rhythm or sound (even in free verse) and a shape (by using line breaks). Poetry is slow, unlike the world today. It is, in a sense, an antidote to life speeding up.

Course Objectives

We will learn:

To understand the many levels of a poem of poetry: emotive, sensory, line breaks, and sound.
To create poetry that has emotional impact, especially when writing about charged topics such as the fragility of life and the inevitability of death.
To use fresh language and take risks and leaps in your writing.
To learn from well-published contemporary poets writing about this topic.
To trust your intuition and be open to revision.
To learn about the larger community of poets and opportunities for sharing your poetry or publishing.
Throughout the class, students will be expected to write poetry, respond to the poetry of peers, and revise poems for sharing and possible publication.

Weekly Zoom Schedule

This course will meet on Zoom on Tuesday from 7-8:00 P.M. Eastern Standard Time. We will not meet on Zoom during Week 2 and Week 5.

In Zoom, students will review lectures, ask questions about the course material, and engage in writing prompts. All sessions will be recorded for students that cannot attend.

Writing About Death: Course Syllabus

Week 1