This is an online workshop that takes place via Zoom

Novella Writing 8-week Challenge

From Kafka’s The Metamorphosis, George Orwell’s Animal Farm, to Sandra Cisnero’s The House on Mango Street, the novella tells a profound, more expansive tale than a short story, in a form intentionally more condensed than the novel. The novella is a complex narrative form that trains its lens on a concise exploration of a particular theme, set of characters or relationships and emotions. Writing a novella requires a grasp of the craft elements of long-form storytelling, such as understanding of plot, character development and dialogue techniques. But additionally, successful long-form writing needs a plan for turning great ideas into great sentences and a community of other writers to help us keep going.

In this eight-week course, aimed at generating a complete first draft of a novella, we’ll build a sustainable writing practice through generative exercises, brainstorming our projects, and studying excerpts taken from great works by authors such as Juan Rulfo, Jane Smiley, Andre Dubus, James Joyce, and Marguerite Duras. The majority of the class will focus on workshopping student work that we’ll produce each week at a pace aimed at completing a manuscript. Two breaks are built into the curriculum to allow for extended generative writing time. We will start small and let the characters tell us what’s next. Whether you’re starting with a new idea for a story or need a fresh perspective on a long-form fiction project you’ve been working on, you’ll have the opportunity to finish the class with the draft of a novella, the confidence to keep going, and a solid plan for how to take your project to the next level.