The Ultimate SF Writing Workshop
Weekly Course Outline
Most meetings will be divided into two parts—discussion of the week's writing topic, followed by writing exercises and group workshopping of your work.
The following outline is a general guide only. Every group is different, and we'll adapt to the group's dynamics and needs as we go. Craig and Jeff will co-teach the first and last sessions, and trade off on the rest. But we'll both critique all of your work.
Week 1 — Introduction to the Workshop
Here's where we'll get to know each other and begin to develop the all-important cooperative relationships that will make the workshop a success. We'll talk about the writing life, self-discipline, money, and expectations—then move on to the workshop format and expectations, and how to workshop constructively.
We'll get you started with a group writing assignment, a fun brain-stretcher.
Week 2 — Developing Ideas Into Stories
It is said that ideas are a dime a dozen. But are they? What really counts in turning an idea into a story? We'll talk about beginnings: one of the toughest, and most crucial, challenges for a writer.
By now, you'll be hard at work on a story, and preparing to bring work to the group for feedback.
Week 3 — Developing Characters
Nothing is more important to a story than its characters. Characters set the tone, provide the motivation and conflict, carry all the baggage, and keep the livestock fed. Without characters, there is no story. They are often human. In our genre, they often are not. We'll talk about the many aspects of character, and how to develop interesting and believable characters. Human, alien, they're all important.
By now, you should be really hard at work on a piece for the group.
Week 4 — World Building, Pt. 1
World building is more than just planets and orbits. World building is the setting for your story, even if it's Central Square, Cambridge, in the present. It is also the circumstances in which your characters find themselves, along with you the author. How do you discover, or develop, the setting / world / milieu / circumstances of your story?
Week 5 — World Building, Pt. 2
World building is more than just settings and circumstances. Sometimes it involves planets and orbits, and mythical realms, and places and times that are stranger than strange. How can you create the alien and the strange, and make it etch a reality in your readers' minds?
Week 6 — Story Structure! Conflict and Plot!
Beginning, middle, and end. A story is nothing without structure. And the structure is empty without conflict, out of which plot grows—conflict of hearts and minds, inner conflicts and outward conflicts, and clashes of will and desire, and characters changing and growing. Where in the world do you start?
Week 7 — Language, Style, and Voice
You can have the greatest characters in the coolest world with the most gripping conflict imaginable, and it will die with a sickening thud as its eyes drop to the floor, while the reader recoils in visceral disgust at the jaw-dropping clichés...if you don't pay attention to grammar, voice, spelling, punctuation, originality, and a lot more. What will convey your story, or distract us from it?
Week 8 — Get Me Rewrite!
Writing is rewriting. It's rarely easy, and sometimes painful. But hardly anyone ever gets it right the first time, and the rest of us would like to shoot those who do. Sometimes rewriting means simple line editing, and sometimes it means tearing a story down to the studs and rebuilding it differently. How can you do this without losing your mind?
Week 9 — Business of Publishing, Pt. 1
So you've finally got a story you want to share with the world. How do you go about doing it? What's the plan, the proper manuscript format, the market? When do you query and how? What about simultaneous submissions, e-submissions, web publishing, and self-publishing? (And this is just the beginning.)
Week 10 — Business of Publishing, Pt. 2
Agents and editors, networking and connections, conventions and promotion, novelizations, sharecropping worlds. What about contracts and copyright? What's it like to be published, and does it change your life?
This is our final meeting, and we hope you'll be leaving with new friends, new skills, and confidence that you're one giant leap closer to becoming a published writer.