Mining Your Story’s Potential will help you develop a new way of “seeing” stories and of uncovering the rich material evident in your drafts. The class will discuss how voice can help us dig deeper into our characters, how structure—or the shape—of a story can inform decisions, how tension and suspense can be intensified, and how scenes—the foundation of all fiction—can take your story to the next level.

This four-week graduate-style seminar will feature class discussions using published stories. Also, writing assignments will help you experiment with your story’s direction and improve your ability to identify opportunities in the text. Each student will receive a story critique from the instructor in addition to any group feedback.

Students will leave with skills for identifying the potential in a draft and ways to strengthen and deepen their stories.

Other Courses of Interest:

Who Should Attend:

Adults, 18 and over
Intermediate writers

About the Instructor: Lee Strickland’s fiction has appeared in Gettysburg Review, Sou’wester, Other Voices, StoryQuarterly, River Oak Review, Summerset Review and other places. Her short stories have won Illinois Arts Council grants and a “100 Distinguished Stories of the Year” notation in Best American Short Stories. Lee has just finished a memoir, an excerpt of which appeared in The Sun and won a “Notable Essay of the Year” accolade from Best American Essays 2011. Lee has an MFA from Warren Wilson College, teaches at North Park University and StoryStudio, and, having recently fallen back in love with short stories, is at work on a novel-in-stories about a Chicago family struggling through the turbulent years after September 11th.