All Pennwriters Courses are conducted in a “live” presentation format utilizing the Zoom platform. If a conflict arises based on the required meeting times, please contact the instructor and Online Courses Coordinator to find a possible solution. ALL sessions will be recorded.
PLEASE NOTE: You should receive a confirmation email upon registering for the course from both Club Express and the Online Classes Coordinator. If you do not receive either emails, please reach out to the Online Classes Coordinator immediately so you do not miss out on information for your class.
Description: The First Truth of Endings is that in rough draft they never work. So now what do you do? And what if you can't even figure out how to get there??? Timons will address this difficult part of storytelling. We'll deploy arcs, the MICE Quotient, genre expectations, emblems and emotional payoffs.
Some field recons will be suggested, and personal feedback will be provided.
Oh, and please come with several of your favorite book/story endings to share. Your favorite endings are a key to your own aesthetic, so we'll pay attention to what they tell us.
Participants should be prepared to write sketch versions of various things during the presentation.
Format:
- 4 recorded 2-hour Zoom sessions, Tuesdays, 7:30pm - 9:30pm
- Field recons to give participants a toolkit of methods
- 4 exercise assignments to do at your own pace; and the end of the month won't be the end of access to the Instructor.
The first week: Emotional Payoffs and The Types of Story Arcs
You will be encouraged to list the endings that are so fraught that you couldn't read them aloud in public. After sobbing quietly, we'll discuss emotional payoffs, and then get to the key concept of the month: story arcs.
Will the subject of "Responsibility Porn" come up? Can't say.
The second week: Genre Expectations, Surprise Endings, and That Little Fillip of Grace
We will remind you that different genres prefer different endings, and learn how to know what they might be. Suprise Endings will be touched on, as well as a recently popular device of showing some touch of positivity in otherwise literary endings.
The third week: Open Endings, Loose Threads, Stopping at the Edge of the Precipice
Timons longs to tell you what happens in this week's lesson, but that's not how it's done in many types of story.
The fourth and final HMS-Invincible-going-down-in-a-cloud-of-smoke week: Emblems & Other Intensifiers, and a Couple More Endings
We'll explore the Disappearing Ending and the End-on-the-Decision Ending. We'll also talk about the use of emblems and other intensifying devices.
This would be a good time to share the results of ongoing field recons by the participants.
Customer Benefits/Takeaways:
- Participants will emerge with significant new superpowers.
- Some participants will be happy ever after, others happy for now. Sadly, some may discover what happens when you don't do the exercises that come your way.
- An extensive set of handout examples, grouped by type, on which to base future field recons.
- Instructor feedback on exercises
- Critiques of three endings: the final 500 words of each piece.
About the Instructor: Timons Esaias is a satirist, writer and poet living in Pittsburgh. His works, ranging from literary to genre, have been published in twenty-two languages. He has also been a finalist for the British Science Fiction Award, and twice won the Asimov's Readers Award. His story "Norbert and the System" appeared in a textbook, and in college curricula. His SF short story "Sadness" was selected for three Year's Best anthologies in 2015, and the story "GO. NOW. FIX." was selected for two in 2021. He's a recent Pushcart nominee, and Intrepid Award winner. His full-length Louis-Award-winning collection of poetry -- Why Elephants No Longer Communicate in Greek -- was brought out by Concrete Wolf. His poetry publications include Atlanta Review, Verse Daily, 5AM, Pittsburgh Poetry Review, Willard & Maple, Asimov’s Science Fiction and Elysian Fields Quarterly: The Literary Journal of Baseball. He was Adjunct Faculty at Seton Hill University for two decades, in the Writing Popular Fiction MFA Program.
Email & Links:
contact email: Wordcraeft@timonsesaias.com or timonsesaias@gmail.com
web page: www.timonsesaias.com
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/867037.Timons_Esaias