Weekly Short Story

In this class we deep dive into a different element, style, genre, or approach to creative writing each week!

We may discuss writing convincing dialogue, writing science fiction, or creating an epistolary store. Each week is totally new!

The teacher will spend about twenty minutes reviewing the subject of the week, providing examples and guiding student discussion. Students will them receive a prompt based on the lesson! They'll spend approximately twenty to twenty-five minutes creating their own short story or scene based on the prompt.

Students may write their stories freehand or type them, and all genres are welcome (so long as the prompt does not direct a specific genre). At the end of class, students are invited (but not required) to share their story aloud with their classmates.

This class is a great opportunity "get the lead out" for students who are enthusiastic writers, and a place for reluctant writers to experiment and play in a low stakes, fun environment.

Some examples of the lessons and prompts this class has explored:

Task: Flip a monster story!
Take a classic monster— vampires, Frankenstein’s monster, werewolves, dragons, etc— and make them the hero of a story. What would the monster be afraid of? Can you describe whatever it is from the monster’s point of view? Think about unique ways to describe the thing the monster is afraid of rather than just describing it in straightforward terms! So, for example, if your “monster” is a dragon, and the thing they’re afraid of is knights, maybe you’d describe knights as “men covered head to toe in silver that even the strongest talon can’t break, who arrive with long spears to kill innocent dragons in their caves while they sleep.”

Task: Introduce a character without using any dialogue!
Take our welcome introduction— name, location, pronoun, favorite book— and apply it to a character. Then, create a scene where we the reader “meet” this character for the first time. Try to get all the information from the welcome introduction into the paragraph without the character ever speaking out loud. See what other information you can pack in as well— maybe the character’s temperament, feelings, likes, dislikes, etc. Aim for two to three paragraphs, and try to make them feel natural and fluid-- so the reader doesn’t totally realize we’re learning a lot about the character, but rather that we’re just seeing this character in their every day life.

Task: Write a character with a job!
Your character’s profession (or their parent’s profession) can reveal a lot about the sort of person they are. For example, a surgeon— are they a surgeon because they love control? Or because they love helping people? Or because they wanted the prestige of the job? Or because their parents pushed them into it?
You can add on another layer of character development by revealing a complication— what if the surgeon is afraid of blood? What if they tend to have anxiety attacks under pressure? What if they are clumsy? How does this complication— and how the character handles it— reveal more about your character’s inner self?

This course is offered as weekly class, or bundled as an 8 week term. Each 8 week term is totally different, so students may sign up repeatedly and never get the same content.

Class time: 50 minutes