Writing Workshops

Secrets of Story Structure: Breaking It Down with Debra Jo Immergut

$175

2 Sessions

Out of stock

Saturday & Sunday 2:00 pm EDT - 5:00 pm EDT January 18 to January 19, 2025

Online via Zoom

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In this weekend intensive, we’ll use maps, infographics, and other visual tools to uncover how stories are constructed. Examining the inner workings of short pieces by Lydia Davis, Souvankham Thammavongsa, Shanteka Sigers, Michael Cunningham, and more, we’ll figure out how they engage our curiosity, build momentum, and leave us feeling changed. Our goal is to break down these stories’ magical effects into steps and processes we can use to transform our own promising ideas into shapely, engrossing narratives.

Participants will be asked to read 4-5 short stories before the course begins. Our time together will consist of illustrated lecture and story analysis, group discussion, and bits of generative brainstorming. Writers of fiction or nonfiction at all levels will finish the course with a set of practical tools and storytelling strategies to power current and future work.

Course Outline:

Day 1
- Beginnings: The map vs. the trip
- Emergence: Story shapes, struggle vs. flow
Day 2
- Furthering: Contrast, cumulative effects, reconsidering the turn
- Endings: Resolution, refusal, resonance

This course is held virtually on Zoom.

Led by

Debra Jo Immergut

Debra Jo Immergut

Debra Jo Immergut is the author of the novels You Again, named a New York Times Best of the Year and shortlisted for the 2021 Gotham Book Prize, and The Captives, a 2019 Edgar Award finalist and published in over a dozen countries. She has also published a collection of short fiction, Private Property. Her essays and stories have appeared in American Short Fiction, Narrative, The New York Times, PANK, Hobart, and elsewhere. She is a recipient of Michener and MacDowell fellowships, has an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and currently works at Smith College in western Massachusetts.

About this series

Writing Workshops

We strive to make our classes the most inviting and rewarding available, offering an intimate environment to study with award-winning, world-class writers. Each class is specially designed by the instructor, so whether you’re a fledgling writer or an MFA graduate polishing your novel, you’ll find a perfect fit here.

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