Shape, Sharpen and Shine

Learn to Polish and Deepen Your Wild Writing Pieces

with Writing, Tanya Shaffer

STARTS ON MARCH 3RD

Shape, Sharpen, and Shine gives you the opportunity to take one of your gorgeous raw Wild Writing pieces and polish it into finished work. Prose, memoir, fiction, or personal essay are preferred.

Over eight sessions, we will work on honing in on the heart of your piece, clarifying, sharpening, and refining it until every word sings. Topics covered in the course include finding the heart of the piece, narrative structures, figuring out what to zoom in on and what to skip over, strategies for revision, pathways to publication, and more. Each person will have an opportunity to submit work once to the whole group as well as to the instructor for verbal feedback. There’s also an opportunity to submit revised work to the instructor for written feedback. You’ll emerge with a beautiful polished gem.

Come with a rough draft of a piece that you want to polish into finished work. Maximum length 1800 words.

Shape, Sharpen and Shine

Learn to Polish and Deepen Your Wild Writing Pieces with Tanya Shaffer

MONDAYS – 10:00 am – 12:00pm PT
March 3rd – April 28th (No Class March 31)

$650 or 2 Payments of $325 each

Class 1: Finding the Heart of the Story

✨Tell us what brought you to the class and what you’re hoping to get out of it. ✨ If there are particular elements of craft you’re curious about, let us know what they are. ✨ Introduce the piece you’re planning to work on in this class and read 200-250 words to the group. ✨ Writing exercise: Finding the heart of the story ✨ Exercise: Planning your writing routine ✨ Assign accountability buddies and discuss goals for the week ✨ Go over guidelines for discussing work, based on the Amherst Writers’ and Artists’ Method.

Class 2: Creative Non-Fiction Overview and How to Make Your Writing Sing

✨ Overview of different forms of creative nonfiction: memoir v personal essay v lyric essay ✨ Discuss revision. What are the important questions to ask when re-reading your own work? ✨ Writing Exercise: Active verbs ✨ Discuss two people’s submissions.

Class 3: What Is Story?

✨ Overview of traditional and non-traditional narrative structures. ✨ The difference between story and plot. (Hint: transformation) ✨ Writing exercise: Seven questions to help define your story. ✨ Discuss two people’s work

Class 4: Narrative Distance: Zooming in and Out

✨ How to decide which moments to zoom in on and which to skip over or summarize. ✨ Summary language vs. in the moment language ✨ Writing exercise: narrative distance ✨ Discuss two people’s work

Class 5: It’s all in the details

✨ Revealing character and place through salient detail ✨ Writing exercise: Showing vs. Telling ✨ Discuss two people’s work

Class 6: Dialogue

✨ Writing effective dialogue: What is revealed, what is concealed ✨ Dialogue writing exercise: differentiating character voices ✨ Four people share portions of revised work and submit revised pieces to Tanya for written comments.

Class 7: Lyric Essay

✨ Overview of the lyric essay form ✨ Writing exercise: playing with form ✨ Four people share portions of revised work and submit revised pieces to Tanya for written comments.

Class 8: Pathways to publication

✨ Overview of strategies and avenues for publication ✨ Writing exercise: Create a vivid summary ✨ Writing exercise: Craft a pitch ✨ Discuss elements of public reading and do a dry run of reading portions of our pieces.

Shape, Sharpen and Shine

Learn to Polish and Deepen Your Wild Writing Pieces with Tanya Shaffer

MONDAYS – 10:00 am – 12:00pm PT
March 3rd – April 28th (No Class March 31)

$650 or 2 Payments of $325 each

About Tanya

Tanya Shaffer is an award-winning playwright, author, writing teacher, and writing coach who splits her time between Ann Arbor, Michigan, and the San Francisco Bay Area.

Her plays have been produced by major regional theatres such as Berkeley Repertory Theatre, TheatreWorks, and A Contemporary Theatre and have traveled to over forty cities in the US and Canada.

She’s the author of the travel memoir, Somebody’s Heart is Burning: A Woman Wanderer in Africa. Her work has appeared on Salon and in more than a dozen anthologies.

She publishes the Substack Tanya Shaffer’s Off-Leash Chronicles, in which she writes on topics ranging from creativity to parenting to travel to spirituality. An early graduate of the Wild Writing teacher training program, she’s been leading Off-Leash Writing Workshops and Memoir & Fiction Workshops since 2018. tanyashaffer.com

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