Are you drawn to weird tales? Speculative fiction grounded in an uneasy darkness that exists somewhere between “estrangement and recognition,” as Kelly Link describes it? Have people told you that the stuff you write is, well … not classifiable? Dark? Weird?
Whether you relate to Kelly Link-weird or Lovecraft-weird, you know how important it is for the reader to understand what’s happening, even if they’re not exactly sure why. Mystery is one thing (good), but confusion is another (not so good). Whether it’s Rick and Morty, Cthulhu, or Nope, the most bizarre ideas need relatable characters to bring them to life. The more absurdist your plot or eccentric your place-time continuum, the more important it is to ground the reader in a world that feels true—urgently, heartbreakingly so. If you’d love one day to have a story picked up by the likes of Apex, Uncanny, or Strange Horizons, the first thing you need to find is the bleeding heart in your Weird.
In four weeks, award-winning author and instructor, J.S. Breukelaar, will guide you through some basic touchstones of Weird; we’ll talk about genre, structure, place and heart—most of what you need to help your work to jump off the slush pile. Writing the Weird is adapted from one of the best-selling courses offered at LitReactor.com and has generated a large number of authors now publishing in their own right. The aim of the course, as always, is for students to not only have a submission-worthy tale drafted by the end, but to give them the tools to keep their speculative fiction weird throughout their career.
Enrollment limit: 12 students
Agenda:
- Week 1: When is Weird (not) horror, science fiction, fantasy, or all (or none) of the above, and why does it matter (to you)?
A look at influences and definitions. How to push against these and find a beginning that scares the face off you. - Week 2: Weirding story structure.
To plot or not to plot? That is the question: how to wrap your weird ideas around forward motion that makes the reader care—madly, deeply. - Week 3: Place.
- The key to dragging your reader, kicking and screaming, into your weird world lies hidden somewhere between defamiliarization and recognition. Let’s go there together.
- Week 4: Heart.
Weird endings are hard to find. Unresolved is one thing. Unsatisfied is another. How to leave the reader sobbing instead of scrolling.