Rethinking Plot: Decentering the Self & Centering the World

$45.00 – $90.00

This course is part of our 2021 Spectacular Summer Seminar Festival (SSSF) and will be held via Crowdcast. The fees from ABC’s adult writing workshops subsidize our free writing programs for kids, whose work is collected in a yearly anthology, and pay our adult workshop instructors. A limited number of seats in each class are reserved for scholarships, which cover 100% of tuition-fees and are awarded on a first-come, first-served basis. All are welcome, and we especially encourage BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ writers to apply.

Just as a book holds many characters, themes, and ideas, so too can it take the form of many shapes. This course will build off of a reconceptualized “plot” as defined by Matthew Salesses in his work Craft in the Real World as “acceptance or rejection of consequences,” an understanding of the world putting demands on its characters, and not the other way around. We will examine traditionally accepted ideas such as conflict, character agency, and story arc as essential to plot in order to break down this Western understanding and unveil new and exciting terrain. We will read excerpts of works that challenge this traditional notion of plot, then apply these techniques to a series of in-class writing exercises. Participants will leave this session with a strong understanding of the many shapes a story can take when plot is reconsidered, along with strategies to further develop new and existing plots in their work.

This Austin Bat Cave adult writing seminar is open to writers of all levels and will be recorded.