Who is this class for?
This online writing class is for writers of all levels working in memoir, personal essay, or hybrid forms who want to deepen their voice and sharpen their perspective. Whether you're just beginning to explore personal narrative or you've been writing for years, this workshop welcomes anyone ready to write with curiosity, intention, and boldness.
What to expect:
Main Character Energy is a 4-week online nonfiction writing workshop centered on claiming your own narrative authority by writing yourself as the force that shapes the story. Through short readings, craft discussion, and generative exercises, you will explore how personal narrative gains power through specificity, obsession, place, and emotional risk.
Together, you'll examine how writers transform lived experience into compelling story, how meaning is constructed, and how attention itself becomes a kind of authorship. In this creative writing course, attention is treated as the engine of storytelling — you'll learn to shape narrative through what you choose to notice, linger on, and question. Using a thematic, generative framework that moves through authenticity, obsession, place, and empathy, you'll access voice in a more intuitive, less rules-driven way than a traditional workshop.
This nonfiction writing workshop is for anyone ready to step more fully into their own story, to write with urgency, depth, and yes, a little main character energy. You'll come away with a deeper trust in your instincts and a stronger sense of yourself as the central force in your own writing.
What are the writing goals?
In this course, students will produce 4 generative writing pieces (one per week, 500–1,000 words each) developed through in-class prompts and exercises. Writers will generate new work each week and receive first-blush feedback in a supportive and encouraging environment. These generative pieces can serve as the foundation for developing longer works of memoir, essay, or hybrid nonfiction.
Readings
Readings may include excerpts from Stay True by Hua Hsu, Everything Is Tuberculosis by John Green, Deep Creek by Pam Houston, and The Empathy Exams by Leslie Jamison.
COURSE OUTLINE
Week 1: Voice, Honesty, and Narrative Authority — Generative prompts centered on "I remember," contradiction, and personal mythologies
Week 2: Theme, Symbolism, and the Urge to Make Meaning — Exercises that elevate the mundane into metaphor; interrogating personal narratives for deeper resonance
Week 3: Place, Embodiment, and Interiority — Sensory writing exercises; mapping emotional terrain onto physical space
Week 4: Emotional Complexity, Perspective, and Compassion — Exercises in reframing, writing beyond our own perspective, and deepening emotional stakes
COURSE TAKEAWAYS:
- A stronger sense of your own voice and narrative authority as a nonfiction writer
- 4 new generative writing pieces (500–1,000 words each) that can be developed into longer essays or memoir chapters
- Techniques for transforming lived experience into compelling, structured personal narrative
- Tools for elevating everyday observations into metaphor and meaning
- Practice writing with specificity, emotional risk, and sensory detail
- Experience giving and receiving first-blush feedback in a supportive workshop environment
PAYMENT OPTIONS:
Tuition is $330 USD. You can pay for the course in full or use Shop Pay or Affirm to pay over time with equal Monthly Payments. Both options are available at checkout.
ONLINE COURSE STRUCTURE:
- Instructor: Brittany Ackerman
- Begins Tuesday, July 21, 2026
- Class will meet weekly via Zoom on Tuesdays, 6:00 PM - 7:30 PM ET
- Tuition is $330 USD.
