Outlining: it’s often treated like a dirty word. We’re told that to outline a plot is to cramp creativity, that unless it’s discovered in writing the first draft it will be contrived. But it doesn’t have to be this way. For some writers, planning ahead is the most natural way to work; for others, exploring the possibility clarifies other ways of working. In this class, we’ll examine ways that outlining a plot can free a writer, that the process itself can arise organically, and that—far from imposing a phony plot on story—carefully conceived outlines can help ensure that a plot hews to a story’s heart. Through exercises we’ll create a plot from scratch and take it organically from inception to outline.
Books will be available for purchase on site.
Josh Weil is the author of the novels What Came West and The Great Glass Sea, the novella collection The New Valley, and the story collection The Age of Perpetual Light. A Fulbright Fellow and National Book Foundation 5-under-35 honoree, he has been awarded The American Academy of Arts and Letters’ First Fiction Prize, the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, the GrubStreet National Book Prize, the Library of Virginia Literary Award, The California Book Award, and a Pushcart. He lives with his family in the Sierra Nevada of Northern California.
