All Pennwriters Courses are conducted in a “live” presentation format utilizing the Zoom platform. If a conflict arises based on the required meeting times, please contact the instructor and Online Courses Coordinator to find a possible solution. ALL sessions will be recorded.
PLEASE NOTE: You should receive a confirmation email upon registering for the course from both Club Express and the Online Classes Coordinator. If you do not receive either emails, please reach out to the Online Classes Coordinator immediately so you do not miss out on information for your class.
Description: You already know how a story starts, you've seen hundreds of them. Still, it can be intimidating, so we'll review four key methods. We'll actually try them out on your current project, so you'll leave with more possibilities than you can use.
The four methods we'll use are Begin at the End, Drop the Reader in the Middle, The Dramatic Line, and Nailing Down the Premise. Some field recons will be suggested, and personal feedback will be provided.
All genres of fiction, from Literary to Horror, are welcome. Except stories about the sport of competitive anemone painting. Nobody needs that.
Format:
- 4 recorded 2-hour Zoom sessions, Tuesdays, 7:30pm - 9:30pm
- Field recons to give participants a toolkit of methods
- 4 exercise assignments to do at your own pace; and the end of the month won't be the end of access to the Instructor.
The first week:
Beginning at the end.
By the end of this course we hope to have made you collectors of good beginnings. And speaking of beginning, we'll start that process by analyzing the ancient technique of starting at the end, or of revealing the whole project on the first page or so.
Yes,
Fight Club will come into the discussion. The chiastic approach will also arise.
But before that we'll discuss story arcs, and Orson Scott Card's MICE Quotient, and the whole idea that the beginning and the end need to fit together.
It would be wise to approach this session - and every session - with three or four projects who need openings, so you've got something specific to deal with in the exercises.
The second week:
Plummeting the Reader into the Maw.
One way to avoid wallowing in backstory is to start the story in the middle, preferably during or just before the crisis. This is useful for concision (so flash fiction, as an example), and for keeping an editor's attention.
We'll discuss kitchen sink writing, for audiences that like that sort of thing. We'll also discuss how to write less complicated fiction, while still skipping the setup and just by-gum telling the story.
The third week:
The Dramatic Line.
I know that all the participants yearn to be singer-songwriters, so the subject this week is hooks. This method can be used alone, or simultaneously with other approaches, so this is a
potential story intensifier.
Some hook lines are the opening line, some come at the end of the first stanza. We'll discuss and analyze.
It might be wise, in preparation for this session, to comb your notebooks for killer lines you've written down, but never used.
The fourth and final Lusitania-going-down-by-the-bow week:
Nailing Down the Premise.
This week's discussion will range from Nicholas Nickleby to "
A River Runs Through It" and from "
Audio Tour" to "
Diem Perdidi" and "
Perfume". "
The Things They Carried" will rise again. The Instructor will fondly present the opening of Neil Gaiman's "
Chivalry" as well.
Customer Benefits/Takeaways:
- Each participant should have a clearer idea of what they like, and don't like; which will strengthen their voice and their tactics
- Handouts containing a plethora of examples, plus participant's notes on those examples
- Half a dozen solid openings for stories or novels
- Instructor feedback on exercises
About the Instructor: Timons Esaias is a satirist, writer and poet living in Pittsburgh. His works, ranging from literary to genre, have been published in twenty-two languages. He has also been a finalist for the British Science Fiction Award, and twice won the Asimov's Readers
Award. His story "
Norbert and the System"; appeared in a textbook, and in college curricula. His SF short story "
Sadness"; was selected for three Year's Best anthologies in 2015, and the story "
GO. NOW. FIX." was selected for two in 2021. He's a recent Pushcart nominee, and Intrepid Award winner. His full-length Louis-Award-winning collection of poetry "
Why Elephants No Longer Communicate in Greek " was brought out by Concrete Wolf. His poetry publications include
Atlanta Review,
Verse Daily, 5AM, Pittsburgh Poetry Review, Willard &Maple, Asimov’s Science Fiction and Elysian Fields Quarterly: The Literary Journal of Baseball. He was Adjunct Faculty at Seton Hill University for two decades, in the Writing Popular Fiction
MFA Program.
Email & Links:
contact email:
Wordcraeft@timonsesaias.com or
timonsesaias@gmail.com
web page:
www.timonsesaias.com
Goodreads:
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/867037.Timons_Esaias