IMF 52337 Nonfiction: Writing Great Characters W

Instructor

Jarek Steele

Class Type 

Workshop

Course Description

Every character must start from a place of love.  That’s a tall order when it comes to writing difficult characters, particularly in memoir, but also in journalistic writing.  Many times, in memoir and literary journalism, writers find themselves writing around a certain person, writing shallowly, or writing what they wish they could be rather than embracing the entirety of who that person is. This can happen for many reasons—lack of information, lack of cooperation from the person in question, conflict with the character, conflicted feelings about the character—the list goes on.  In this course, students will learn to create solutions to these problems by focusing on portraiture and directing our writing to the task of drawing a multidimensional character who lives in context within the story we’re telling.

Textbook

No text required.