This four-day summer camp is designed for aspiring writers who want to understand the elements of effective storytelling and character development, outline their own stories, and receive constructive feedback from classmates and the teacher, who is a professional book editor with a Master’s in Publishing. Whether your learner is writing short stories or hoping to write an epic novel, studying and applying these fundamental principles of strong story crafting will help your budding author learn how to create exciting, compelling plots and complex, dynamic characters.

Understandably, students will not be able to write an entire novel or story in just four classes. However, by the end of this camp, students will have learned the six elements of narrative structure (hook, inciting incident, rising action, climax, falling action, and resolution), written a hook and inciting incident, and outlined the entirety of their stories. They will also have learned a little bit about character arcs (development), setting, and world building.

Each day, the first part of our class time will be dedicated to learning the elements of narrative structure. We’ll study examples of effective hooks, conflicts, climaxes, etc. as well as powerful character arcs in popular books and movies (via a PowerPoint slide show and a Word handout) to help learners grasp the concepts more fully. (Discussions about books or movies will not involve reading or watching them. I will be briefly examining a few specific elements of their plots and characters but not discussing them in depth.) I’ll encourage interaction and discussion during our lessons.

Then, your budding writer will spend the remainder of the class time outlining his/her/their own story and workshopping his/her/their ideas with fellow students and the teacher.

Typing outlines and stories (e.g., in Google Docs or Word) is preferred over writing with pencil on paper so that the learner's writing can more easily be copied, pasted, and shared with the teacher in the chat for feedback purposes.

Please refer to the class syllabus for a detailed breakdown of each lesson.

Late enrollment is permitted, as learners will have access to the handout and the class recordings.