8-Week: Finding Voice, Then Using Voice

This workshop will zoom in to focus on the granular details of our sentences in order to find larger, zoomed-out lessons about our projects as a whole. A good sentence, in its form, language, and tone, will reveal as much about the speaker as it does the objects of their attention. So, let’s ask: Where is our voice working its best? More to the point, why is our voice working so well here? The goal of the course is to leave with a new understanding of the micro and macro qualities of our novels, memoirs, stories or essays, along with a set of tools for doing our own sentence-level revision in this project and our next. The workshop will begin with two weeks of studying the fine art of syntax and voice, with close, diagnostic reading of exemplary work and at-home writing exercises. The following six weeks will feature rounds of workshopping short (3 pages max) samples of work, and guided worksheets for peer feedback. That means not a huge amount of reading, but a good deal of focus and care for details.