SHORT FICTION WORKSHOP

(Don’t) Spare Me the Details: A Fiction Workshop

Laura Warrell

The unsung hero of storytelling is, in large part, detail, what writer Francine Prose calls “the building blocks with which a story is put together” and “the clues to something deeper.”

Precise, perhaps even unexpected, details make plots riveting, characters compelling, and sentences elegant. In this fiction workshop, we will examine the multitude of ways authors incorporate details into their work and explore techniques for finding the perfect detail to make a story come alive on the page. We will workshop submitted manuscripts, paying close attention to the author’s use of detail. Generative work will hopefully reveal the untapped magic of our stories. Manuscripts limited to 4,000 words/16 pages.