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Setting as Character: Applying Craft Lessons From Travel & Food Writing to Your Fiction, Starts Monday, April 21st, 2025
Regular price
£211.00

Setting as Character: Applying Craft Lessons From Travel & Food Writing to Your Fiction, Starts Monday, April 21st, 2025


Unit price per

Begins Monday, April 21st, 2025

Now Enrolling!

Any questions about this class? Use the Chat Button (lower left) to talk with us.

Are you ready to transport your readers to vivid, unforgettable worlds? In this immersive four-week workshop, travel and food writer Cristina Slattery—whose work has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, Forbes Travel Guide, AFAR, Travel+Leisure, Food & Wine, and more—will reveal how to infuse your fiction with the rich sensory details and emotional pull often found in travel and food writing.

Drawing on her background in journalism and education, Cristina will guide you through crafting settings that feel so real that your readers will want to explore them themselves.

By focusing on close observation, descriptive writing, and sensory engagement, you’ll learn how to bring any locale—real or imaginary—to life on the page. Whether new to writing or a seasoned storyteller, this course will deepen your understanding of what makes a setting truly immersive.

WHAT YOU'LL LEARN: 

  • Close Observation for Captivating Scenes: Discover how to observe places and people with a journalist’s eye, then translate those insights into compelling fictional backdrops.
  • Crafting Emotional Resonance: Employ proven techniques to evoke emotional responses in your readers that make them care about your characters and the worlds they inhabit.
  • Leveraging Personal Travel Experiences: Learn how your journeys—whether across the globe or in your hometown—can spark fresh ideas and bring authenticity to your writing.
  • Hands-On Practice: Over four writing assignments, either create new scenes or refine existing ones under Cristina’s expert guidance.

COURSE OUTLINE:

Week 1: The Role of Place in Nonfiction & Fiction - Explore how the power of place is harnessed differently in nonfiction and fiction, and learn what these two forms can teach each other.

Week 2: Close Observation of Place to Get the Details Right - Hone your ability to capture the flavors, sights, sounds, and textures that make a setting come alive in your reader’s imagination.

Week 3: How Visiting Different Places Can Inspire Fiction Writers - Delve into how travel fuels creativity and practice techniques to make any location (real or invented) a springboard for storytelling.

Week 4: Bringing Settings to Life Through Sound & Texture - Enrich your fictional scenes with the subtle details of sound, touch, and ambiance to create fully immersive experiences for your readers.

Why Enroll?

  1. Expert Instruction: Gain invaluable insights from a writer whose work has appeared in top publications around the world.
  2. Practical Techniques: Each lesson is designed to give you actionable tips and exercises you can apply to your current and future writing projects.
  3. Community & Feedback: Join a supportive group of like-minded writers, and receive personalized feedback to help refine your craft.
  4. Transform Your Fiction: Emerge from the class with richer, more compelling scenes that draw readers into the heart of your story.

Don’t miss this unique opportunity to elevate your writing by learning from the best. Enroll now, and let Setting as Character be the game-changer your fiction needs!

    ONLINE COURSE STRUCTURE:

    Wet Ink, our dedicated online classroom, was designed specifically for writing classes. It is a private, easy to use, and highly interactive online platform. Learn more about it from this class demo.

    The class is entirely asynchronous which means that there are no set meeting times and students work to their own schedules. Participants will be from different time zones, which allows for a wonderful diversity of voices. In addition to ongoing discussions, all craft materials, lectures, reading assignments, and writing prompts will be available in the Wet Ink classroom. Students will also post work and provide and receive feedback within the online environment.

    PAYMENT OPTIONS:

    Tuition is $259. 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.
    • Instructor: Cristina Slattery
    • Workshop starts Monday, April 21st, 2025
    • Tuition is $259.
    • Course is fully online. Students can work according to their own schedule within weekly deadlines. Once you have enrolled, the instructor will send you a link to our online classroom, which is provided via Wet Ink.