The Personal Is Political: Honing Your Story’s Message with Prachi Gupta

This writing workshop is now sold out. Please email [email protected] to join the waitlist—and become a member for early access to future programming.

This course is for writers who are seeking guidance to help turn personal experiences into narrative nonfiction with a resonant political or social message. This course is appropriate for all levels—from those who are mid-draft to those beginning the writing process of a memoir, personal essay, or reportage—grappling with the core argument of their work. Through class readings, discussions, workshops, and assignments, students will tighten the message and scope of their projects and learn a set of tools to help them finish their work.

Course Outline:

• Week 1: Locating the Message. Class will begin with introductions and icebreakers. Every student will have the opportunity to answer the questions: “Why do you want to tell this story now? And why must you, specifically, tell this story?” By the end of class, students will have a one-sentence thesis statement or inquiry, which they will refine at home and bring to the next class.
• Week 2: Finding the Story in the Argument. Students will workshop and refine their thesis statements/arguments. The question/prompt for this class: “Did you always believe this? Why or why not? What changed?” Students will free-write a journal response to this question for 20-30 minutes, focusing on the specific moments or events in their lives that prompted transformation. After free-writing, I will guide a class discussion on what questions or issues came up during this process. For homework, they will break that free-writing assignment into 3-10 beats (depending on the length of their proposed work). Taking an index card, on one side, they will write the “event” and on the other side of the card, they will write 1-2 sentences about what change occurred as a result of that event. In class, I will review what this looks like by sharing an example from my own memoir-writing process.
• Week 3: Story Beats. At this point, every student will have a set of beats that connects their experiences to the larger message of the story. This will become the skeletal structure of the work, from which students can begin to make decisions about how to incorporate research and interviews, and how to craft the narrative. In class, students will develop and workshop their story roadmaps, including major conflict points, and how and why each moment relates to a larger message.
• Week 4: Vulnerability, the Engine of the Personal Narrative. Students have now built the basic foundation of the project. In this class, we go back to the “why”—why is it so urgent to tell this story now? Students will participate in a 30-minute free-writing exercise: Who are you writing this for? Imagine that person and write a letter to them, explaining why you are writing this, and what you hope your work offers them. Afterwards, we will discuss how the language of the letter they wrote compares or differs from their original conceptions or drafts of the project. What’s working in this letter? What isn’t? How can they bring this vulnerability into the writing of the project?
• Week 5: Incorporating Research and Reporting Into the Work. Outside of class, students will write and submit a draft that fleshes out one specific “beat”, using the techniques of the letter from Week 4. We will workshop these drafts as a class and answer questions about how students can build out the scene, argument, or emotional resonance through details, imagery, and/or research.
• Week 6: Befriending Questions and Doubt. It is tempting to want to provide answers in our writing, but the best work gently steers readers to questions. How do we command a personal narrative while leaving room for questions? How do we distinguish between questions that need answers and those that move the story forward? Students will have an opportunity to articulate the questions they are grappling with in their draft. Students will offer feedback to help determine whether these questions can be resolved in the writing or can become a narrative device that brings more specificity and vulnerability into the work.

Teaching Style: After taking my class, students will have a framework and toolkit for approaching personal reported essays and impactful, emotionally resonant nonfiction narratives. In class, I share my own experiences and approach to memoir writing and personal essay writing, along with relevant examples of how other authors have approached works. Students will complete a few short homework assignments and have an opportunity to workshop a short piece (up to 1,000 words) of their project.

Level: Introductory

This course will be held online via Zoom.