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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.

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.

Description: Flash fiction is a writer's playground, and a useful training ground. You can experiment with a style, while committing to only a page or two. You can learn, through concentrated effort, what is, and what isn't, story. And as you practice, there are markets waiting for the product. This workshop will define several types of flash fiction and how they are structured, and let you try your hand. More importantly, it will teach you how to define other types, and turn the definitions into action plans. Students will be encouraged to focus on facing their weaknesses: by inventing stories that will exercise those specific, flabby writing muscles. And the instructor will give private critiques of at least three flash pieces. 

The first week: Storytelling Basics, the Notebook, and Writing from Nothing

We'll discuss basic ways to start a story, and to structure it. The importance and utility of the writer's notebook will be covered, especially how it helps with the discipline of Writing-from-Nothing. Details may include the flux capacitor.

The second week: Which Fate to Date, and the Flash Fiction Approach Called "Part of One Thing Happens"

We will individually choose whether it's best to be eaten by a dragon, by a smilodon, or by an omnivorous ankylosaurus. We'll discuss starting a piece with a Riddle, and starting with a comparison/contrast. A list of techniques to steal will be offered. Some suggestions of what NOT to steal will be made, as well.

The first opportunity for critique will arise.

The third week: More Openings, and Being a Tease

This week we'll talk about beginning with a lie, or beginning with an absurdity, or just a tease. A variety of "stunts" that can structure your flash fictions will come under scrutiny, and we'll try to invent a couple of our own. The utility of premonitions, complaints, and quick cycles shall be discussed.

The second opportunity for critique will emerge.

The fourth and final Lusitania-going-down-by-the-bow week: Maintaining Market Lists, More Beginnings, and Beginning at the End

We'll do, I dunno, something. Oh, yeah, we'll discuss where you might send your flash pieces and how to develop a personal market list. There will be more suggestions of ways to begin, and we'll share the results of our personal field recons.

The third opportunity for critique will knock.

Finally, as you've always suspected, online workshops have secret agendas. For this workshop, here are the secret agendas:

• We will discuss flash fiction, and practice writing it.

• We will also accumulate ways to begin a story. There will, in fact, be a List of 12 Ways To Begin A Story, some of which we will attempt. It might turn out to be 16, we'll see.

• We will learn how to experiment, which is one of the values of writing flash. We will attack the same idea from different beginnings, we will give ourselves little challenges. We will accept that the same story can be told in many ways.

• We will learn how to write a story, from nothing, at the drop of a hat.

• We will also learn the value of the writer's notebook (whether it be an actual notebook, or a phone app, or tattooing it into the skin of inattentive pedestrians).

• We'll also discuss marketing, but that will not be an emphasis of the lessons.

• Most importantly, we'll learn how to look at published flash fiction, and to adopt the things we like and evade the things we deplore. In other words, how to keep teaching yourself this class, for the rest of your life.

Customer Benefits/Takeaways:

• A sense of the wide variety of approaches that flash fiction allows

• Specific ideas on how to start a flash piece

• A healthy list of examples from the Instructor's own field recon

• The discipline of writing pieces from scratch, with little or no preparation

• Three opportunities for critique of a flash fiction

• Instructor feedback on exercises

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