Essentials of Writing Personal Essays II: Advanced

Tackle the questions of writing the personal essay, from the practical (how writers balance craft and confession, creation as well as recreation) to the philosophical (examining subjective “truth” in creative nonfiction; considering the ethics of turning life into art). Work with a published essayist to write up to 8 essays and polish them for potential publication. 

Course level:  Intermediate / Advanced 

Required Book:  None required 

Workshop Length:  8 weeks 

Tuition:  $399.00 ($359.10 for VIP)

Start Date: View Essentials of Writing Personal Essays II: Advanced Course Schedule

Course Structure
The workshop will consist of eight one-week sessions. Each session will include online lectures (text based), occasional (online) reading assignments, and writing and practice exercises submitted to the instructor for private review. In addition, the course provides a number of interactive venues through which you might further the conversation with your peers and advance the cause of the course as community. 

You will learn: 

  • How to embrace and convey the “subjective” truth.
  • How to develop the constructed “I” and storytelling voice.
  • How to structure your personal essay … what details to include and what to leave out.
  • How to avoid and address the ethical concerns of creative nonfiction.

Who should take this course: 

  • Writers looking to take their personal essay skills to the next level with advanced training in both essay structure and your storytelling voice
  • Graduates of Essentials of Writing Personal Essays
  • Creative Nonfiction writers seeking to refine their work with the help of a Published Author

What our students are saying about this course:
“I just finished the eight week class Essentials of Writing Personal Essays II: Advanced and loved it. I have taken classes through University of Washington – online classes, Gotham and Writers Online Workshops. Of all the classes, (all in essay/creative non-fiction) this is by far the best one I have ever taken. The written materials were good but I learned the most from Instructor Kempton. She took so much time and effort to really evaluate the work, provide constructive criticism and make meaningful suggestions. It is clear that she spent a lot of time reading the pieces and responding at a thoughtful and significant level. I feel that I have reached the “next stage” in my writing due to her evaluations and suggestions. I had the “a-ha” moment in my writing – and I have previously been published.”
~ Rose Flaherty 

Essentials of Writing Personal Essays II: Advanced Writing Workshop

Course Outline

Session One: Tell It Slant

  • Learning to tell the “truth”
  • Craft, not confession
  • The constructed “I”

Assignment: Write a 500- to 750-word “autobiography” designed to reveal some aspect of who you are…or, more accurately, who you want your reader to see in the space allotted. (In other words, imagine you are writing an autobiography of yourself as . Fill in the blank with whatever aspect you’d like to focus on—worrier, writer, parent, pet owner, et cetera—and go from there.) Keep in mind this is not about recalling or retelling all the facts and events of your life as , which can’t be done in 500 to 750 words, but instead recalling those specific moments which reveal the version of yourself you intend to convey. The tone can be anything you want, in keeping with your goal. And remember that this autobiography is not going to be read by someone who knows you but someone who knows nothing about you, so though you’re being focused and selective in what you tell, make sure you’ve given the reader everything she needs to understand you in this space, using not just facts but your voice and tone to match and to help make the point.

Session Two: The Subjective Objective

  • Intention and manipulation
  • The “whole” truth
  • The end suggests the means

Assignment: Choose an experience or moment from the last few days and consider the story that’s present in the moment. How was the experience meaningful for you? What contributing factors or extenuating circumstances contributed to the meaning? How might you go about creating and recreating the meaning in the form of storytelling? Brainstorm ideas until you find a moment you might work with, then write your opening paragraphs establishing voice, occasion, and problem, and keep going until you arrive at a conclusion (1,000 to 1,250 words max). Be open to what happens along the way.

Session Three: Plot and Structure

  • Beginning, middle, and end
  • Tense and narrative time

Assignment: Consider an experience from your past that you’d like to write about. Without overthinking it, make a list of all aspects of the memory that come to mind, from things that happened to the history or backstory that made the moment relevant to the small sensory or emotional details you remember. Try to be as specific and thorough as possible in your list, capturing as much as you recall down to the (seemingly) most insignificant detail. Then, write in a brief line what you believe your objective in telling the story might be—to make the reader feel the same sadness or joy as you, to show how we might regret the offhanded things we say, what-have-you—and begin pulling out those details from your list you think are essential or most meaningful. Choose how you want to narrate the story—where to begin, whether to use past or present tense, et cetera—and write a first line which brings the reader into the story and establishes the mood you want. Then, try to keep going (1,000 to 1,250 words max). If you get stuck in the writing, or lost in a tangent, look back at sections on “Beginning, Middle, and End” and “Tense and Narrative Time” to consider if your approach matches your objectives.

Session Four: Voice

  • The storytelling presence
  • Finding and checking your voice

Assignment: Choose a recent event to write about in which you were not the primary focus or participant. This could be anything at all—something you witness happening to a friend, something a friend or family member shares with you, what-have-you—but make sure it’s an event which nevertheless has some resonance for you. Then, consider how you might tell the story in such a way that it reveals your relationship or reaction to the event … in other words, that the thing happening “over there” reveals something of who you are, what you fear, what you hope for, et cetera. Try to craft a voice that reveals how the story is resonant for you, not one that necessarily matches the reaction of the primary person involved, and then tell the story (1,000 to 1,250 words). (Hypothetical example, you might have a sister who overreacts to everything and calls once a week to explain every terrible thing that happens to her … but which you’ve come to recognize isn’t earth-shattering, so you use that phone conversation to put together a puzzle. In such a case your voice might be comic, even if the events being described seem to be dramatic, because you’re conveying your experience with the event.)

Session Five: Learning from Fiction

  • Dialogue
  • Scenes
  • The reliable unreliable narrator

Assignment: Choose a memory from early in your life to write a brief personal essay of about 1,000 to 1,250 words. Try to choose a memory that is meaningful in some way or stands out but which is nevertheless distant enough that it requires creative invention and license on your part (in reconstructing scene, dialogue, what have you). This might even be a story that gets told about you—like a family story that’s been passed down—that you don’t quite remember happening that way. The purpose of the assignment is to test that line between faithful recreation and creative construction. You might consider this as part of your subject matter—the fact that the “truth” of the story is hard to come by—even as you use the tools borrowed from the fiction writer to make the story real to your reader.

Session Six: Other Subjects and Forms

  • Writing about persons, places, and things

Assignment: Choose a person, place, or thing to write about for an essay of 1,000 to 1,250 words. Consider what it is about your subject that you want to come across to the reader … and consider what your authorial relationship to the subject—present in the text, “invisible” in the text—should be, in order to accomplish your goals.

Session Seven: Ethics

  • The ethics of writing about yourself and others

Assignment: Select one of the pieces you’ve done so far for the course and consider what ethical concerns are raised by it. Then, write a brief personal essay (1,250 to 1,500 words) in which you discuss the ethical concerns you had (or now see) in writing that piece. Keep in mind that the essay you write for this assignment is itself a creative one, in which we should not just understand but feel your own emotional or ethical dilemma regarding your writing of the original essay. In other words, the essay you write for this assignment isn’t merely informative but functions as a personal essay in which your voice, tone, content, and objective bring us closer to who you are in this particular situation.

Session Eight: Revision

  • Reminding yourself of your goals
  • Reading out loud
  • Having another reader
  • Making it impersonal

Assignment: Choose the piece you’ve done for this course which you’re most proud of—and one which you believe still needs work—and conduct a thorough revision, making sure that the meaning and emotion you were trying to convey, as well as the overall objective and theme, come through and reworking the essay so that it achieves your goals. Both the original and the revision—and clearly mark which is which, please—will be turned in to your instructor.