$110
"Where do I get my ideas from? I make them up. Out of my head."—Neil Gaiman
How do we discover stories—authentic stories that are true to who we are, that explore the parts of the world that interest us and come out in forms that only we ourselves could have written?
Write quickly.
The goal of this workshop is to use techniques from "flash fiction" to generate a lot of raw story material: thirty stories in thirty days.
We'll use weekly writing prompts to force you to collide ideas like only your brain can, and you'll commit them to paper very quickly—so quickly that your conscious mind won't have time to censor. We'll also spend time considering the elements that make up a story: what do you need, and what can you skip, for your very short story to still feel like a story?
These techniques should benefit writers of all genres, but the workshop is particularly geared toward fiction writers, screenwriters, and playwrights: the material you've created can act as germs for new, larger work.
CHRISTOPHER DeWAN has led writing workshops at UCLA, The New School, Emerson College, New York's School of Visual Arts, and the California State Summer School for the Arts. He has published over three dozen short stories in journals including A cappella Zoo, Bartleby Snopes, DOGZPLOT, Jersey Devil Press, JMWW, Juked, Necessary Fiction, Passages North, and wigleaf, and his screenwriting has been recognized by CineStory, Final Draft, the PAGE Awards, Slamdance, and others. Learn more at http://christopherdewan.com.