Character 1: Creation is an Intensive, meaning it happens in a short time span (1 day in NYC, or 2 days on Zoom, or 3 weeks Online). The course includes a mixture of lectures and exercises. It’s open to writers of any level. Farther down, you can view a syllabus for this course.
If you feel you’re solid with conceiving characters, you may go straight to Character 2. If you’re in doubt about this, start with Character 1; it will be valuable even if some of it is review.
Characters are the beating heart of every story. When we’re made to feel their presence, the entire story awakens, and we follow those folks wherever they go—likable or not, young or old, familiar or foreign.
Whether you’re working on fiction, nonfiction, or a script, we’ll show you how to breathe life into characters that we see and believe and care about.
Character 1 teaches how to conceive characters—where they come from, who they are inside and out, what their contradictions are, where their desire lies, and what makes them fascinating.
Character 2 teaches how to bring characters to palpable life on the page, making them real enough so we feel like we could live next door to them or bump into them on the street.
Course components:
- Lectures
- Writing exercises
Zoom classes
The syllabus varies from teacher to teacher, term to term. Many topics will be similar to those covered in the Online classes.
About
- Zoom classes happen in real time.
- The Zoom classes unite students from all over the world at Gotham—New York City’s most well-established writing school.
- The Zoom classes happen on videoconference, in “real time.” Very much like an in-person class except everyone is on a computer or device in their own space. The Zoom software is free and simple to use.
- You can take a Zoom writing class from anywhere, as long as you have an internet connection. The majority of our Zoom students are located in the U.S. but we also draw students from practically every country in the world.
- Tech support will be available. Out of respect for everyone’s privacy, the Zoom sessions are not recorded.
