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Writing Workshops

Sold Out—Online Workshop: From Inspiration to Published Work — The Craft of Storytelling in Fiction led by Stefan Merrill Block

$495

8 sessions

Out of stock

Once a week Thursdays, 6:30 pm EDT - 8:30 pm EDT April 23 to June 11, 2020

The Center for Fiction

This workshop has reached its capacity. To join the waitlist, email Thierry Kehou at [email protected].

This workshop will take place online via Zoom. Participants will receive instructions for access prior to the first class.

6:30-8:30pm ET / 3:30-5:30pm PT


How do you put your ideas to work in the service of a great story? How do you make the reader care deeply for the fate of your characters? How do you give meaningful narrative shape to the messiness of what inspires you to write? This workshop will provide an encouraging and constructive atmosphere to explore the questions that are central to any fiction writer’s process, especially at the start of a writing career.

Author Stefan Merrill Block will open each session with a discussion on the craft of the unputdownable story: ways to raise a story’s stakes, ways to keep a plot compelling, and ways to craft indelible characters and settings. Writers will also dissect published stories and discuss how to apply learned lessons about characterization, premise, voice, pacing and structure to their own work. For at least half of each meeting, Block will lead a group workshop of participants’ writing, offering useful criticism and fresh ideas for breaking through barriers and playing to strengths. Block will also offer to meet with each writer one-on-one, for detailed editorial guidance. Additionally, in the final meeting, Block will lead a discussion on the business of getting published. This workshop will include a few short writing exercises, but writers should come to the workshop with some pages to share: a short story, a fragment of a novel, even an outline will do. This workshop is intended for any writer struggling to give shape to the stories they feel compelled to tell.

“I’ve taken a lot of workshops in my day, and when I needed a fire lit under my writerly business, I signed up for Stefan Merrill Block’s Story Laboratory through The Center for Fiction. It was one of the best decisions of my career.”
—Chris Tarry, author of How To Carry Bigfoot Home

“Stefan’s workshop had just the right mix of analyzing the writing of others and developing my own craft. I’ve taken a few workshops and classes over the years but consider the money I spent on Stefan’s to be the most productive.”
—Michael Power

“Stefan Merrill Block is one of those rare gifted teachers that at once challenges you and makes you feel secure enough to take risks. He gave me the insights and tools to make me a better writer and a better reader. He is wise, funny, and kind—and his class is great fun, to boot.”
—Josh Wallack

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Led by

  • Stefan Merrill Block

    Stefan Merrill Block

    Stefan Merrill Block

    Stefan Merrill Block grew up in Plano, Texas. His first book, The Story of Forgetting, was an international bestseller and the winner of Best First Fiction at the Rome International Festival of Literature, The Ovid Prize from the Romanian Writer’s Union, the 2008 Merck Serono Literature Prize and the 2009 Fiction Award from The Writers’ League of Texas. The Story of Forgetting was also a finalist for the debut fiction awards from IndieBound, Salon du Livre and The Center for Fiction. Following the publication of his second novel, The Storm at the Door, Stefan was awarded The University of Texas Dobie-Paisano Fellowship, as well as residencies at The Santa Maddalena Foundation and Castello Malaspina di Fosdinovo in Italy. Stefan’s stories and essays have appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker Page-Turner, The Guardian, NPR’s Radiolab, GRANTA, The Los Angeles Times, and many other publications. Stefan’s third novel, Oliver Loving, was released in 2018 by Macmillan/Flatiron Books, and is being developed for television by Participant Media. He lives in Brooklyn.