Ripe Fruit IV : Prose Critique

CRAFT OF FICTION WORKSHOP
8 Saturday morning workshops led by Lauren Alwan

We'll cover such topics as:
How Unexpected Detail Holds a Reader
Once you have a reader, you've got to keep her.
Description that uses unexpected detail engages, energizes and, yes, entertains your reader. .

Layering Voices: The Narrator's Role
A single page of your story can (and should) contain a trio of voices-but whose? Understanding this strata of viewpoints is crucial to gaining
control of your narrative.

The Three Essential Promises of a Story
An author's unspoken agreement with a reader is to provide a character, a conflict and a climax. Knowing how these work together is essential to fulfilling your role as author by creating a solid narrative.

Because I Say So: The Point of View Persona
Beyond directional point of view-like first-person present tense or third person past-think of point of view as a kind of editorial slant. Point of view imbues prose with many dimensions of character. Understanding the
basics will enable you to bring greater depth and dimension to your work.

Setting That Drives Character
Setting is more than just a specific time and place. Each detail of setting has the ability to further reveal and compel the characters you place within it. Discussion will center on detail of exterior objects as
it relates to character.

Necessary Omissions: How Gaps Drive Story
What isn't said can be more important than what is. We'll examine the various ways in which omissions create necessary tension: how they further a story, make it more compelling and resonant for the reader.

The Consequence of Character: Personality, Predisposition and Plot

Ifyour narrative involves a character, a plot is inevitable. Characters,when faced with a conflict, are inclined to an outcome. Knowing how to set up this situation, to endow it with the utmost potential, is key to producing an engaging story.

Participants' works will be read by all beforehand and included in thediscussion of each topic. The group is limited to eight.

Prerequisite: Students will need to submit, in advance, a draft in progress--neither a first draft nor a finished work, but one that has undergone some revision and is in need of further. Please come to this
class prepared to read and think; it will be a fruitful interval after which you'll return to your draft, and your overall writing, with a deeperunderstanding of how fiction works.

Cost: $350 (payment plans & work exchange available)
Deposit: $100 (non-refundable)
Location: San Francisco, address TBA
Instructor: Lauren Alwan

Lauren Alwan's fiction has appeared in StoryQuarterly, Alaska Quarterly Review, The Berkeley Fiction Review, and FishStories. In 2001, her work was nominated for Best New American Voices, and she received a Sudden Fiction Award from the Berkeley Fiction Review in 1996.

A graduate of Ripe Fruit workshops, Lauren has taught fiction for Ripe Fruit since 2003. She is currently working toward an MFA in Creative Writing in the low-residency program at Warren Wilson College. She resides near Oakland, California, with her husband and daughter.