TUESDAYs, Jan. 13th - Feb. 10th | You might not have a bad story — you might just have a weak beginning.
This five-week intensive focuses on the most decisive real estate in fiction: the first page. Readers, agents, and editors make a call within a few paragraphs, long before a story has the chance to prove itself. Through close reading of opening pages by Meg Wolitzer, Jhumpa Lahiri, Lorrie Moore and others, we will examine how writers create voice, stakes, orientation, and narrative pull immediately — and then apply those methods to your own openings through guided exercises and workshop critique.
By the end of the course, you will have rebuilt your opening so that it does what a first page must do: compel the reader to turn the next one.