Creating Unlikable Characters. Karen Bender, Instructor

IOWA SUMMER WRITING FESTIVAL 

Fall 2023–Winter 2024 

Creating Unlikable Characters (Weekend Workshop) 

Karen E. Bender, Instructor 

Dates/Time 

Friday, December 15–Sunday, December 17, 2023 

Introductory Meeting and Overview, Friday on Zoom: 

Fee: $350 

Course Description 

What is an "unlikable" character? You hear the phrase in workshops and wonder: Are my characters likable? Should they be—or not?

Maybe you feel pressure to make your character "likable," but why? Why not create a character who is messy, complex, real? You may not want to go to dinner with this character, but your reader will want to learn more about them, to figure out how they function in the world.  

In this workshop, we'll examine stories and novel excerpts with characters representing people whom you might not "like" in real life, but who are layered, compelling, and convincing on the page. On Saturday, we'll look at sample stories and practice techniques for creating characters that readers want to know more about. On Saturday night, you’ll complete a one- to two-page character exercise, and on Sunday, we’ll share these exercises in class, giving and receiving feedback on how to develop our characters further. You'll leave the class with a rich, interesting character who will continue to grow—though perhaps never into likability—after the weekend ends.   

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 $350. Payment in full is required to register. 

Registrations are accepted on a first-come, first-served basis. 

Class size is limited to 12. 

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!