This is an in-person workshop that takes place at Inprint House

Undercurrents: Making Meaning in Fiction

What makes a story meaningful? Meaning as an aspect of writing and storytelling is often considered apart from other techniques of fiction craft. It is thought to be spontaneous, naturally occurring in response to the other ways a story functions. This course challenges that notion, examining specifically how authors develop meaningful stories that readers remember for years to come.

This workshop will dive into how meaning is intentionally constructed in a story, looking beyond basic techniques of craft like character and plot, and instead exploring how writers can use the more nebulous aspects of fiction writing–story shape and narrative structure, voice and language, symbolic and thematic schema, omission, negative space and more–to form groundswells of emotion and meaning in their work. We will look at the work of writers like Annie Proulx, Haruki Murakami, Alice Munro, Tim O’Brien, Louise Erdrich, and others. This course will follow a workshop structure and is best suited to writers who have some workshop experience. Writers will have two opportunities to submit work for feedback, and discussion will focus on deepening meaning in stories.