Fundamentals of Short Fiction
3 October at 20:00 – 22:00 EDT
Eight Tuesdays, Oct 3-Nov 21, 8-10pm
Open to all
Limited to 12 participants
Hybrid Workshop
This is an eight-session long, interactive, hybrid workshop, exploring basic concepts related to short fiction. The workshop will be a space to receive constructive feedback on works in progress. Experimentation is encouraged.
Each two-hour session will focus on a different element of style:
- character development
- dialogue
- descriptive writing
- setting
- point of view
- voice
- theme, and
- structure.
Participants will receive prompts a week before each session (including before the first meeting) and will be asked to submit a short piece of writing (500-1000 words) to the group prior to each session. Participants are welcome to bring material generated in response to the weekly prompts or any other work that they would like feedback on (as long as it stays within the word count).
Everyone will have an opportunity to read aloud from their submitted work and receive in-depth feedback from the workshop leader and their peers. Participants will also receive written feedback on their submitted work from the workshop leader after each session.
Each week’s prompts will focus on a particular element of short fiction, and we will begin the session with a conversation about the role that element plays in creating a cohesive and immersive world. Then we will move into hearing and discussing submitted work.
Eva Crocker is a freelance editor and author based in Montreal. Her debut novel All I Ask was long-listed for the 2020 Giller Prize and won the 2020 BMO Winterset Award. Her short story collection Barreling Forward was shortlisted for Dayne Ogilvie Prize for Emerging LGBTQS2 Writers, the NLCU Fresh Fish and the Award for Emerging Writers. It won the Alistair MacLeod Award for Short Fiction and the CAA Emerging Author’s Award, and was a National Post Best Book. Her forthcoming novel Back in the Land of the Living will be published by House of Anansi Press in August 2023. She is a PhD student in Concordia University’s Interdisciplinary Humanities program where she is researching visual art from Ktaqmkuk (Newfoundland).