NVL 55 — Set Your Story in Motion: Novel Workshop
Quarter: Spring
Instructor(s): Angela Pneuman
Date(s): Apr 6—Jun 1
Class Recording Available: No
Class Meeting Day: Mondays
Class Meeting Time: 6:00—8:30 pm (PT)
Please Note: No class on May 25
Tuition: $825
Refund Deadline: Apr 8
Unit(s): 2
Enrollment Limit: 18
Status: Registration opens Feb 23, 8:30 am (PT)
Quarter: Spring
Day: Mondays
Duration: 8 weeks
Time: 6:00—8:30 pm (PT)
Date(s): Apr 6—Jun 1
Unit(s): 2
Tuition: $825
Refund Deadline: Apr 8
Instructor(s): Angela Pneuman
Enrollment Limit: 18
Recording Available: No
Status: Registration opens Feb 23, 8:30 am (PT)
Please Note: No class on May 25
While a short story relies upon compression, a novel unfolds over a broader stretch of time, often requiring the writer to manage layered plots, a large cast of characters, and significant world-building. But these challenges also present opportunities. In this course, we will look at published novel openings by writers such as Tobias Wolff, Tana French, Junot Díaz, and Angela Flournoy to discover what powers the narrative engines of their first chapters. We will discuss how tension introduced early in the story begins to suggest the kinds of shape, structure, and plot that can carry a writer through a full draft. Through short weekly assignments, we will try different approaches to our own novel beginnings, and each student will workshop one chapter of up to 5,000 words for constructive feedback. Even though the course will focus on energetic openings, students who are further along in their drafting are welcome to submit later chapters.
ANGELA PNEUMAN
Author
Angela Pneuman has taught at Stanford and in the MFA program at Sarah Lawrence College. She is the author of Lay It on My Heart and Home Remedies, and her fiction has appeared in The Best American Short Stories, Glimmer Train, The Virginia Quarterly Review, New England Review, and Ploughshares. She contributes to Salon and The Rumpus. Pneuman directs the Napa Valley Writers' Conference. She was a Stegner Fellow at Stanford and received a PhD in English from SUNY Albany. Textbooks for this course:
(Required) Stephen Koch, The Modern Library Writer's Workshop (ISBN 978-0375755583)