The School of Letters & Tongues · language, literature & writing
Creative Writing
Workshop rooms for the working writer: draft bravely, revise honestly, and finish what you start.
The working mechanics of short fiction — scene, character, point of view — practiced draft by draft.
Syllabus · 5 units · ~26 hours
Unit I — Scene and Summary
Showing, telling, and the false rule between them · Building a scene beat by beat · Compressing and expanding time
Unit II — Character and Desire
Want, obstacle, action · Dialogue that does two jobs · Interiority without stalling the story
Unit III — Point of View
First person and its blind spots · Close third person · Distance and irony
Unit IV — Story Shape
Openings that establish stakes · The middle: escalation and turn · Endings earned, not appended
Unit V — The Workshop
Reading a peer's draft generously · Giving notes a writer can use · Receiving notes without flinching
Writing poems by ear first — image, line, and form practiced weekly, revised without mercy or malice.
Syllabus · 4 units · ~20 hours
Unit I — Writing by Ear
Syllable, stress, and breath · Imitation as apprenticeship · Keeping a line notebook
Unit II — The Image
Concrete before abstract · The objective correlative, plainly · Avoiding received language
Unit III — Form as Constraint
Sonnet, villanelle, and syllabics · Shaping free verse · The prose poem
Unit IV — Revision and the Reading
Cutting first lines and last lines · Sequencing a small portfolio · Reading your poems aloud
Writing from life with craft and conscience — scene-making, structure, and the ethics of real people.
Syllabus · 4 units · ~22 hours
Unit I — Truth and Craft
Memoir, autobiography, and the personal essay · Memory's unreliability, honestly handled · The ethics of writing about real people
Unit II — Scene-Making from Life
Reconstructed dialogue · Sensory detail and verification · The reflective voice: then-self and now-self
Unit III — Structures
Chronology and its alternatives · The braided essay · The hermit-crab essay
Unit IV — From Draft to Essay
Finding the real subject beneath the story · Revising for meaning, not just polish · Submitting personal essays
Speech as action, scenes as contests, and a ten-minute play written, read, and rewritten.
Syllabus · 4 units · ~24 hours
Unit I — Dialogue Under Pressure
Speech as action · Subtext · Silence and stage directions
Unit II — The Dramatic Scene
Objective, obstacle, tactic · Entrances and exits · The two-person scene
Unit III — Structure
The ten-minute play · Acts and reversals · Endings on stage
Unit IV — Page to Stage
Formatting a script · The table read · Rewriting from what you hear
What to do after the first draft — diagnosis, large-scale rebuilding, and the final line pass.
Syllabus · 3 units · ~14 hours
Unit I — Diagnosis
Reading your draft cold · Reverse outlining a story · Finding the real beginning
Unit II — Large-Scale Revision
Reordering scenes · Cutting and merging characters · Rewriting from memory: when to start clean
Unit III — The Line Pass
Verbs first · Cutting favorite lines that do no work · Final polish and proofreading