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(Please note final paragraph for necessary class preparation.) The workshop will have two parts. One will focus on the fundamentals of the creative process for any fiction writers, beginning or advanced, who aspire to create enduring literature. We will address such issues as what is art and what is distinctive about the way the artist addresses the world, the inner self, and the objects to be created. The second part will be a carefully constructed, orally coached, in-class writing session that will help attendees instantly exercise the parts of their artistic self identified in the first part and that could potentially yield a viable short story. Absolutely essential: Bring to the workshop an appropriate mode of story-writing that you are comfortable using, anything ranging from portable computer to paper and pencil.

In this workshop, Paul will share what editors, first readers and judges look for in a short story. He will discuss how to get your story published, onto that shortlist and how to avoid the rejection pile. Paul will take you behind the scenes of anthologies, competitions and journals, explaining the psychology of the decision-making process and the importance of ‘That Killer First Page’. He will highlight the essential ingredients to create that crucial story opening. In a form and genre where every word counts, you will get tips on staying focused on your story and where to start the action; you will also get clues on when to stop. For the workshop, you write an opening and get feedback on that. We will look at submission opportunities; how to find them and where you should be sending your stories.

By virtue of their brevity, it is quick and easy to provide a writer with great feedback on a short story, right?
Wrong! (And we’ve all lived through a horror to know it.) But at some point in the writing process, we need and want to receive feedback on our short stories. The first half of this workshop will guide you through a range of reflections to help you better understand your own creative process as a short story writer, how to find appropriate feedback and how to hear it in a way that empowers you to serve the story you’ve written. When should we seek feedback? How? And from whom? Is a writing group a good idea? And what group model – if any – might suit us best? The second half of the workshop will provide strategies for giving astute and sensitive feedback on the stories of others and particularly, how to shed light on missed narrative opportunities peculiar to the short form – those elusive and wondrous ‘gaps’ that have the capacity to create whole worlds. This workshop is designed to be empowering, illuminating and skill-building: no scary feedback sessions here.

Personal experiences by someone who combines publishing, editing and writing. From putting together the best collection possible to creating can't-miss tag lines, synopses, audience targeting and marketing plans. Historical examples followed by one-on-one tutoring of workshop attendee presentations. This workshop will provide 1. Hands-on information and one-to-one dialogue for short story writers at all levels of their development. The approach will depend on the make-up of the attendees. 2. Specific information on what makes a good short story collection. 3. Information on publishers who are favorable towards publishing short story collections and the types of collections they favor. 4. Information on how to create/fine tune successful tag lines, synopses, audience targeting and marketing plans -- with examples followed by one-on-one with attendees. Mirolla will help writers develop the ability to explain during the workshop the level they're at (how close they feel they are to having a collection ready), and the types of short stories they write. He will assist writers the skill of bringing in tag lines, synopses, audience targeting and marketing plans so that they can be discussed and dissected in the workshop.

How do you get readers to care enough about your characters to keep them reading? How can you reveal settings without slowing the plot? The answer is conflict, the magical ingredient that allows the other ingredients to “strut their stuff.” At the workshop, we will have a brief discussion about the central role of conflict in today’s Twitter-paced world. After this, we will comment on one another's in-progress short fiction.  For participation in the workshop, please email me a one to five-page story, or excerpt, as self-contained as possible, by April 30, 2022 to btravalini@gmail.com. Notification of acceptance will be emailed by May 10, 2022.  Participants will be asked to prepare for the workshop by writing brief comments beforehand on questions that I will email prior to the workshop. I will share one other submission, (another participant’s short story), with each participant for similar comments. You will receive my questions and the submission by May 30, 2022. At the end of the workshop, you will have a better idea about how conflict energizes your scenes and drives your plot forward.

Pascal once apologized for writing a long letter because he didn’t have time to write a shorter one. 

Indeed, brevity is the soul of wit, more so with flash fiction (also called postcard fiction or micro-fiction).  Often, in just six words or up to 1,000 words, you have to compress a universe, telling a story with characters as real to the reader as a longer short story. It’s possible, it’s not easy, and it takes time. 

In this workshop, using a multi-modal approach that uses short films, small-group discussions and writing exercises, author Felix Cheong offers you strategies in writing flash fiction, particularly in creating suspense and twists that keep the reader hooked to the end.

In this workshop, the writer will take participants through the technique of writing non-fiction short stories – these can be exploratory stories about people, society, everyday occurrences that hold stories that we often ignore. Journalists often use a similar technique to build their long-form stories, which essentially are stories that run into 2,000 words or more. What are the ways to draw a reader in and keep them there and how do you use some of the skills that a fiction writer would, to build an enjoyable narrative in short non-fiction stories.

Who should attend:
This workshop would be useful to a range of participants – those who feel they lack the imagination to write fiction, but want to write interesting stories and get published, and to those in media and in media courses who want to improve their writing by borrowing the techniques of non-fiction writers.


Workshop Venue: NIE Block 5 Level 1 TR507

In 1977, French novelist Serge Doubrovsky came up with the term “autofiction” to describe his novel, Fils. Exactly what autofiction is has been hotly debated, first in France and later in the U.S. and U.K. ever since. Autofiction is not simply another name for autobiographical fiction. Depending on who’s using the term and in what context, autofiction might come close to what some writers term memoir, or it might come closer to the ironic metafictional treatments of Self popularized by such writers in the 1960’s and 70’s as Kurt Vonnegut and John Barth and more recently, Ben Lerner and Michael Chabon. In this workshop, we will sample it all, reading and writing “Fiction of strictly real events or facts” as well as fantastical and allegorical representations of ourselves, using much of our real biographical information, but not much else. If you like the idea of exploring writing that takes you to an exciting but sometimes uncomfortable spot between real and imagined versions of yourself, then this is the workshop for you.

In advance of the workshop, I will make available to you several examples of different types of autofiction to use as models for your own autofictions.

Workshop Venue: NIE Block 5 Level 1 TR505

We live in globalized times. Those of us who regularly traverse nations, cultures or languages embrace the betwixt-and-between of our transnational reality. But how do we write from this “trans” perspective — of trans-national, trans-cultural, trans-lingual, trans-religious, etc. life — in fiction without bumbling into stereotypes or TMI (too much information)? In this workshop, we will consider ways to write our stories by reading like a transnational writer. We will do reading and writing exercises, using excerpts of stories, and respond to questions and writing prompts in search of ways to voice our “trans” global reality.

Workshop Venue: NIE Block 5 Level 1 TR506