Lafayette Writers' Studio

Every good YA novel is born of its author’s inner adolescent, that high school kid that never went away. This workshop will put writers in touch with their teenage selves and help them begin to shape their material into a YA novel that will appeal to kids today. Class time will address the differences between adult and young adult fiction, identify the characteristics of a good YA novel, and offer examples of YA writing that works. Through a series of exercises, writers will discover strategies for finding their teenage voice and shaping their material into novels that appeal to kids today. PLUS all registrants receive a copy of About Grace.

You have a story to tell, but how best to get the scenes and memories on the page so that readers feel as if your lived experience is also theirs? In this class, we’ll explore the following three narrative structures in creative nonfiction that reveal personal and universal wisdoms: narrative, flash, and braid.

Class time will be used to examine these three different approaches to structure a narrative, the benefits of each, and then we will use this discussion to try our hand at the multiple possibilities structure affords in our own writing. You will leave this class with the start of three new essays or one essay with three different approaches and endless possibilities.