Writing Workshops

Write Yourself Out of a Corner with Alice LaPlante

$25

1 Session

In stock

Saturday, 12:00 pm EDT - 4:30 pm EDT June 17, 2023

Online via Zoom

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In this class, we will experiment with various creative constraints taken from my new book, Write Yourself Out of a Corner: 100 Exercises to Unlock Creativity to generate exciting and fresh new material. You can work in any genre: Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, or Hybrid. We will share out work (always voluntary) and discuss our processes, and how constraint-based writing can jolt us into writing our best work.

Participants will complete four prompts and discuss the results.

Capacity: 50

Presented in partnership with W.W. Norton.

Led by

Alice LaPlante

Alice LaPlante

Alice LaPlante is an award-winning writer, editor, and teacher of writing, both fiction and nonfiction. A Wallace Stegner Fellow and Jones Lecturer at Stanford University, Alice taught creative writing at both Stanford and in San Francisco State’s MFA program for more than 20 years. A New York Times bestselling author, Alice has published four novels and five non-fiction books, as well as edited best-selling books for many other writers of fiction and nonfiction. She is the author of The Making of a Story, the bestselling writing textbook. In 2023 she has two more creative writing textbooks from W.W. Norton coming out: Write Yourself Out of a Corner, 100 generative writing exercises for both poets and fiction writers, and The Lab: Adventures in Hybrid Writing, co-authored with Matthew Clark Davison. She regularly consults with Silicon Valley firms such as Google, Informatica, VMware, and Cisco on their content marketing. Alice lives with her family in Mallorca, Spain.

By Alice LaPlante

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Write Yourself Out of a Corner

By Alice LaPlante

Published by W. W. Norton

PURCHASE

When you are facing down a blank page (or screen), a constraint-based prompt—for example, “you must use the words ‘cloud’ and ‘green’” or “you must set the scene in a crowded grocery store”—can get your brain working in unexpected ways.

In this creative writing guide, longtime teacher and novelist Alice LaPlante shares 100 original exercises that will simultaneously push you into a corner and give you the tools to write yourself out of it. LaPlante explains the purpose of each exercise—to sharpen your ear for dialogue, generate surprising images, or access intense emotions—and breaks down student examples to reveal how to achieve these goals. Whether you are looking to jumpstart new ideas or find a fresh angle on a work in progress, and whether you write fiction, creative nonfiction, or poetry, Write Yourself Out of a Corner will strengthen your imagination and your craft.

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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