Classes

Engaging in creative activity lightens our hearts, helps us make peace with our experiences, and reminds us how to play. Creative writing is especially accessible; it requires no special equipment and can be done anytime. But many of us either internalize messages that we aren’t good enough or let life’s demands get in the way. This course is designed to change that, revitalizing your creative writing practice through a combination of daily prompts and weekly live guided adventures.

You will be encouraged to try fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, with preliminary exercises to launch each exercise. You’ll also learn myriad ways to tap into your creative flow, such as re-examining meaningful experiences, using mindfulness to explore the richness of everyday life, and collaborating creatively through writing games. You’ll leave with a portfolio of new pieces as well as the habits of mind to maintain a regular creative writing practice.

Begin, develop, or complete your novel this year with a committed mentor and a dedicated community of peers. Over the course of an academic year, we’ll meet weekly to learn the craft of novel writing, beginning with the fundamentals of character, structure, setting, plot and point of view and moving on to advanced techniques for capturing interior thought, moving though fictional time, and writing dialogue from the inside out.

This course offers writers a workshop excerpt deadline and a small peer break out group to keep them accountable to their projects, and targeted, actionable feedback to keep their manuscripts moving forward. Novel excerpts will be submitted in advance, and while everyone is expected to read each piece closely and come prepared for a thoughtful discussion, no written critiques are required—saving more time for one’s own writing. The instructor will provide detailed written feedback and hold one-on-one conferences with each student. Share the joys and challenges of the writing life. Show up for the work—and for one another.

Writers often learn to "show, don't tell," only to realize they also need to learn how to tell. Intriguing exposition is essential, sweeping storytelling compresses time, and world building keeps readers immersed during moments of high action. So how do authors get all this in there without using the dreaded info dump? This course is for writers interested in adding pages to a novel or memoir in progress while building their summary-writing toolbox.

After a day of lectures, freewriting exercises, small-group shares, and discussion, students will come away with new writing in six unique modes of narration. They will read excerpts by James Baldwin, Joan Didion, Kevin Wilson, and others to see how master storytellers apply these tools, which may be especially helpful for writers who have amassed more pages for a project than they can use. Prepare for an immersive day of learning and community, and expect to emerge with new skills to enrich your narrative craft.

Ammi teaches for Stanford’s Online Certificate Program in Novel Writing Program. These classes are only available to members of the two-year program, with applications available each April for the cohort to begin in the Fall.