Writing Workshops

The Science of Writing a Short Story with Zeynep Özakat

$495

8 Sessions

Out of stock

Once a week Wednesdays, 6:30 pm EDT - 8:30 pm EDT January 17 to March 6, 2024

Online via Zoom

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This workshop has reached its capacity. To join the waitlist, please email Randy Winston at [email protected].

Could I teach you what story to tell? No, but I could help you tell the story that you want to tell.

In this creative writing workshop, we will focus on some of the craft elements it takes to write a short story, such as POV, tone, setting, time, structure, etc., so we can help you write your story. This is a workshop for writers of all levels and all stylistic-inclinations. Let’s think of this writing class like we would an engineering class (but with more magical elements, maybe even a talking animal or two…). We’ll try to identify the problems that come up in storytelling and discuss the best techniques to solve them. Through our generative writing prompts we might even design and conduct an experiment or two.

Even though creative writing is not “formulaic”, we’ll close-read stories to see how writers have been successfully able to craft theirs. Through readings of short stories by Ling Ma, Senaa Ahmed, Kirstin Valdez Quade, Mariana Enríquez, Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah and more, as well your fellow classmates’ work, we will discuss craft elements such as voice, dialogue, plot, pacing, character, beginnings and endings, and sharpen our writing skill sets.

At the end of eight-weeks, writers will leave this class with a deeper understanding of how to read like a writer and be able to edit their own work more confidently.

Please note that each student is required to submit a short story for workshop. This class is limited to 12 students.

Course Outline

Session I: Getting Started/ Beginnings
Session II: Character & POV
Session III: Structure/Plot/Pacing
Session IV: Voice & Dialogue
Session V: Tone, Setting & Mood
Session VI: Information & Omission
Session VII: Editing
Session VIII: Endings

Two students’ stories will be workshopped each week from Session II through Session VII.

Led by

Zeynep Özakat

Zeynep Özakat

Zeynep Özakat was born and raised in Istanbul, Turkey. Her writing has appeared in Glimmer Train Stories, where she won the Fiction Open Contest, in Black Warrior Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, and Gulf Coast Online. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Syracuse University, where she received The Shirley Jackson Prize in Fiction, The Leonard Brown Prize in Poetry, and a Graduate Dean’s Award for Excellence in Research and Creative Work. She has received scholarships and support from The Disquiet Conference in Lisbon, The Bread Loaf Environmental Writing Conference, The Juniper Summer Writing Institute, and The Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, where she was a 2021-2022 Writing Fellow.

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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