Building Interiority: How to Create Characters from the Inside. Karen Bender, Instructor
Ended Feb 9, 2024
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Full course description
IOWA SUMMER WRITING FESTIVAL
Fall 2023–Winter 2024
Building Interiority: How to Create Characters from the Inside (Four-Week Workshop)
Karen E. Bender, Instructor
Dates/Time
Thursdays on Zoom, January 11–February 8 (no class January 25)
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6:00–8:30 pm Iowa/Central Time
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7:00–9:30 pm Eastern Time
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4:00–6:30 pm Pacific Time
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5:00–7:30 pm Mountain Time
Fee: $500
Course Description
What is “interiority” in fiction and memoir? If you’ve taken workshops in the short story, novel, or memoir, you might have been told that your characters need more of it. Interiority is everything inside a character--their memories, fantasies, thoughts, perceptions, judgements, etc. You know your character has thoughts; why are they not showing up on the page?
In this reading/writing class, we’ll look at some of the ways writers create interior worlds for their characters. How does a character's interior life relate to plot? We'll also look at how a character’s interior world relates to the action of the story.
Each week, we’ll discuss a few model stories we’ve read in advance and do writing exercises from prompts I will give you. You can develop any of these exercises into a longer work, up to 8 pages, that you’ll send to me at the end of our four weeks. I’ll give you feedback on that piece of writing in our 30-minute individual Zoom conference.
Join us for a productive and supportive writing community, a place to explore this fundamental element of fictional craft and to generate new writing through focused exercises. You’ll leave with an understanding of how to use interiority to create richer and deeper characters in either fiction or memoir.
Instructor
Karen E. Bender is the author of the story collections Refund, which was a finalist for the National Book Award in 2015, shortlisted for the Frank O'Connor International Story Award, and longlisted for the Story Prize; and The New Order, which was longlisted for the Story Prize. A new collection is forthcoming from Counterpoint Press in 2025. Her novels are A Town of Empty Rooms and Like Normal People, which was a Washington Post Best Book of the Year. Her fiction has appeared in magazines including The New Yorker, Granta, Ploughshares, Zoetrope, The Yale Review, The Harvard Review, Guernica, and Story; has been reprinted in Best American Short Stories, Best American Mystery Stories, and New Stories from the South: The Year's Best; and has won three Pushcart Prizes. She has taught at the Iowa Summer Writing Festival and also in the MFA programs at Hollins University, Warren Wilson College, the University of North Carolina Wilmington, and Chatham University. She is a Visiting Writer for the MFA program at SUNY Stony Brook, Core Faculty at the Alma College MFA in Creative Writing, and a mentor for BookEnds. She has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Rona Jaffe Foundation. Visit Karen at www.karenebender.com.
Registration & Fees
The fee for this course is $500. Payment in full is required to register.
Registrations are accepted on a first-come, first-served basis.
Class size is limited to 10.
Note: Your credit card payment will be processed by an external provider and will appear on your credit card statement as “UI Writing—Magid Center.”
Refund & Cancellation Policy
If you need to cancel your enrollment, please let us know as soon as possible. We can only offer full refunds if you cancel one week prior to the start of class. After that, before the start-date of class, we can offer a 50% refund. We cannot refund day-of cancellations, and we cannot refund or partially refund registration fees once the class has begun.
Terms & Community Policy
1. The Iowa Summer Writing Festival is a program for adults. You must be at least 18 years old to enroll in Festival workshops.
2. The Iowa Summer Writing Festival is a community built on an assumption of shared enterprise, in the spirit of mutual respect. We reserve the right to a) revoke the registration of or b) dismiss from the program any person who disrupts the learning/working environment of others. Participants in the Festival are subject to all University of Iowa policies governing conduct in our community, whether online or in person.
Questions?
Contact the Iowa Summer Writing Festival: iswfestival@uiowa.edu. Phone: (319) 335-4160.
Our small staff is out and about. If you phone and we miss you, please leave a detailed message!