LIBRARY COURSES
FANTASY LIBRARY // On Muses, Myths, and Legends: Storytelling From Start to Finish With Roshani Chokshi
In The Muse, the Myth, the Legend: Storytelling from Start to Finish, students will reawaken their sense of wonder to find inspiration in the world around them. Together we will explore the gaps and fissures in myth and fairytale to equip students with critical tools to find access points for retellings, new perspectives, and fresh angles. Students will be able to test the strength of their story ideas, and see it through from start to finish.
Roshani guides students through craft foundations such as how to build stories around emotional anchors and how to pay homage to history while still engaging with the audience and, most importantly, honoring our intentions as authors. Though rooted in myth, fairytale, and fantastical elements, these tools and techniques can apply to works of any genre.
FANTASY LIBRARY // The Dark Fantastic: Crafting Unputdownable Fiction with Isabel Cañas
The Dark Fantastic: Crafting Unputdownable Fantasy explores how techniques deployed by mystery and thriller, the Gothic, and horror can be used to build suspenseful, atmospheric, and thrilling fantasy. Isabel Cañas breaks down how mysteries and thrillers use pacing, foreshadowing, and red herrings to manipulate reader expectations and create tension and suspense.
Students will learn techniques employed by the Gothic to enrich their settings thematically, deepen atmosphere, and embrace the subversive. Finally, students will study how character is the beating heart of horror and will learn concrete methods for bringing emotion to life on the page in vivid, fresh ways. Throughout the course, Isabel draws on her critically-acclaimed, bestselling novels to demonstrate how stealing the best of what darker genres have to offer can only strengthen your own work, regardless of genre.
FANTASY LIBRARY // Fantasy Gateways: Approaches to Magical Worldbuilding with Zoraida Córdova
Prolific author Zoraida Córdova guides students through the different entry points of science fiction and fantasy worlds in Fantasy Gateways: Approaches to Magical Worldbuilding.Drawing from her extensive experience, Zoraida Córdova walks students through her worldbuilding process, including character, setting, and magic system development. Presenting her own works as case studies, Córdova shows students how to bridge the fantastic to reality through research and cultural analogs. Students will join Córdova as they map a hero’s quest using her preferred story beats, research checklist, and worldbuilding questions. This course applies to all writing genres, expanding beyond novels into screenplays, comics, video games, and more.
CORE LIBRARY // Intentional Craft: Writing Outside Your Lived Experience with Ayana Gray
New York Times bestselling author Ayana Gray guides students through approaching their writing craft with respect, responsibility, and accountability at every stage of the process.
Intentional Craft: Writing Outside Your Lived Experience will inspire you to create interesting, diverse stories by teaching students the importance and skill of crafting characters outside your own lived experiences. Storytellers have the unique power to open doors and build bridges when they write stories that are inclusive and encompass more than one community. In this foundational course, Ayana addresses how to respectfully and responsibly write characters of different races, ethnicities, gender identities and expressions, sexual orientations, disabilities, and neurodiversities. From her own experiences and research, Ayana includes best practices, dos and don’ts, as well as practical ways to avoid stereotypes when venturing out into new territory.
ROMANCE LIBRARY // Selling A Romance with Jasmine Guillory
In Jasmine Guillory’s Selling a Love Story, students will learn to create compelling romance narratives by exploring the foundational aspects of romance, including its rules, structure, and key terminology.
Module 1: How to Start covers character introductions, their life goals, and crafting an engaging 'Meet Cute.' Module 2: Sell the Characters helps students identify what’s missing in their characters’ lives, their strengths and flaws, and how secondary narratives influence their growth and the romance. Finally, Module 3: Sell the Story teaches students how to depict the journey from attraction to true love, ensure a satisfying happy ending, and craft a believable resolution after the Third Act Breakup.
This course provides applicable exercises for students to clearly tie story arc to characterization, and it’s discussion of how to make romance believable is applicable not only to the Romance genre, but strong romance B-plots as well.
