
Developing a Creative Writing Research Toolkit 6-Week Open-Genre Zoom Workshop, Starts Friday, May 19th, 2023
Begins Friday, May 19th, 2023
Now Enrolling!
This course meets Fridays from 1:00-3:00 p.m. ET on Zoom beginning May 19th, 2023.
Open to All writers!
Any questions about this class? Use the Chat Button (lower left) to talk with us.
**This Class is Open to Fiction & Nonfiction Writers**
Taught by Adin Dobkin, the author of Sprinting Through No Man's Land. His essays and reporting have been featured in New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, Catapult, and The Paris Review Daily, among others. He received his MFA from Columbia University.
In hearing how writers came upon these puncta, these details that stop a reader on the page, someone may hear of countless banker boxes filled with photocopied archival documents. They may learn of the single carbon-copied sheet a writer stumbled upon that changed their entire understanding of a story. Less frequently described is how the writer created the circumstances that led to that eureka moment.
In this course, we’ll consider the ways and whys of research for fiction and nonfiction and how the results of those methods might be folded into an in-progress work. Writers will discuss how to think about research in relation to their work, learn some common research methods and forms, and read how others have sought to balance aesthetics with the conveyance of something true. In addition, writers will participate in an open-ended workshop during the final weeks of class that will allow them to share research dilemmas they have encountered and consider specific ways they might integrate research into their work.
COURSE TAKEAWAYS
- How, when, and why to use archival searches, interviews, academic reviews, and experiential research, among other research methods.
- How different sources can be used in conjunction with one another to create effects in a reader.
- How to develop a research plan and how to respond to roadblocks in finding sources.
- How to consider personal ethics in writing about real life and history.
COURSE EXPECTATIONS:
Each class will combine a lecture and craft discussion with a discussion of a reading. In the last four weeks of the course, half of each meeting will be taken up with an abbreviated, research-centric workshop.
Students will be expected to read and contribute to class discussions as well as share a 10-20 double-spaced page workshop submission, if they'd like. Optional craft assignments will be available to students who are just starting a project.
COURSE SKELETON:
Week 1: Planning Research
Week 2: Archives and Interviews
Week 3: Academic Surveys and Experiential Research
Week 4: Writing and Synthesizing Research
Week 5: When Problems Arise
Week 6: The Ethics of Research
ONLINE COURSE STRUCTURE:
This class is entirely online and will meet via Zoom.
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Instructor: Adin Dobkin
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Class size limited to 8 writers
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October 26th, 2020 to December 14th, 2020
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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, provided via Wet Ink.
Contact us HERE if you have any questions about this class.
Instructor Adin Dobkin is the author of Sprinting Through No Man's Land. His essays and reporting have been featured in New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, Catapult, and The Paris Review Daily, among others. He received his MFA from Columbia University.