An Apology to the F&SF Community, and Particularly to Those who Look to Me for Leadership

In June/July I’ll be teaching two multi-session workshops and a few one-offs. Here’s what’s coming up.

To register for any class, mail me at cat@kittywumpus.net and tell me a) which classes you want to register for, b) what rate is applicable, and how you would like to pay (Paypal, Venmo, or check preferred.)

Extended Workshops

Find the Heart of Your Story: How to Use Theme, Motifs, and Symbols in Fiction

Everyone tells you that a story needs a theme, but how do you figure out what your story’s theme is? And once you know that, how do you go about conveying and underscoring that theme without hammering a reader over the head with it? How do motifs, symbols, and other devices work to enhance the theme? We will explore theme, motifs, and symbols from a craft perspective and develop skills with them through a mixture of lecture, discussion, and writing exercises.

This class is designed for writers who understand story basics and are looking to advance and refine their short story skills. Students will work with one story over the course of the workshop in order to apply new skills as they are acquired.

Meets Sunday evenings, 7-9 PM Eastern time, June 1, 8,15,25 and July 6. (5 sessions)

Cost: Free to Schoolhouse Rock and Super Extra Deluxe Campus Pass holders, otherwise $299 for Patreon supporters; $399 for all others. Partial and full scholarships available; BIPOC, neurodiverse, and LGBTQ+ writers are particularly invited to apply.

The Basics of Fiction Series

Each two hour workshop covers what you need to know to really understand one of the fundamentals of fiction. Each session focuses on a specific aspect of fiction: characters, world-building/setting, and plot and includes writing exercises designed to hone your skills in this area.

This class is designed for newer writers who want to strengthen a specific aspect of their writing or build their skillset overall.

• Character Basics, Saturday, June 7, 9:30-11:30 AM Eastern time
• World-building Basics, Saturday, June 14, 9:30-11:30 AM Eastern time
• Plot Basics, Saturday, June 28, 9:30-11:30 AM Eastern time

Cost for series/individual workshop

• Entire three sessions $99 for Patreon supporters, $199 for all others.
• Individual session: $49 for Patreon supporters; $79 for all others.
• Partial and full scholarships available; BIPOC, neurodiverse, and LGBTQ+ writers are particularly invited to apply.

Single Session Classes

The cost of single session classes:

• Patreon supporters at the $25 and higher levels – free
• Patreon supporters at lower levels – $49
• All others – $59
• Partial and full scholarships available; BIPOC, neurodiverse, and LGBTQ+ writers are particularly invited to apply.

Ready to Rock and Roll: Planning Your Book Publicity Campaign

Got a book coming out in the next year that you want to launch? Join me for a session where we’ll talk about different facets of book publicity, what steps you can take to maximize them, and how to create a plan that will carry you through the campaign.

This class is aimed at writers who are publishing independently or with a small press, although the plan will also help those publishing traditionally.

7-9 PM Eastern, Tuesday, June 10

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You Should Take This Class: Writing Second Person

Second person can be one of the most interesting POVs to work in, due to its complexity and relationship with the reader. How do you work with a reader’s innate resistance to being told what to do in order to exploit the unsettling nature of the POV? What stories are best suited to be told in second person. Through a mix of lecture, exercises, and discussion, you’ll learn how to use this POV and what to avoid.

This class is designed for writers who understand story basics and want to explore this POV in order to refine and advance their skills.

7-9 PM Eastern, Tuesday, June 17

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Canva Basics for Creating Book Covers, Zoom Background, Social Media, and More

The Canva tool can be a huge help when trying to create graphics. Learn how to use it for the things you’re most likely to want, such as Zoom backgrounds or posts sized for specific social media, as well as how to use templates and the resize tool to save yourself time.

This class is aimed at all writers looking to create graphics for self-promotion.

7-9 PM Eastern, Tuesday, June 24

Every culture tells stories. We keep our history alive this way. We all have rituals, whether they are secular or deeply religious. When you’re worldbuilding, you can communicate a plethora of culture and history through the traditions and festivals your characters observe.

Coming up on December 10th, I’ll teach Christmas in Narnia: Creating Traditions for Fictional Cultures for the Rambo Academy for Wayward Writers. Pardon the frosty pun, but a fictional holiday is an excellent tip to the iceberg of your world’s history. Consider the wealth of similarities and differences of the festivals of lights that originate from the Northern Hemisphere of our planet alone:

During the season of autumn into midwinter, things get darker and colder in most of the NH. The further north you go, the more stark that dark and cold becomes. Many traditions originating in the Northern Hemisphere have celebrations and rituals revolving around light and warmth at this time. India and its diaspora bring us Diwali and Deepavali, two different but similar multi-day festivals of lights, color, and life. Judaism celebrates Hanukkah as the observance of a historical miracle”“eight nights of light produced from barely any fuel oil. A fun side note: we eat fried foods like latkes and donuts on Hanukkah to represent the bounty of the oil! Who wouldn’t love a holiday that prescribes feasting on greasy carbs?

On Christmas, people celebrate the birth of the Christ child, destined to bring light, love, and goodness into a harsh world. As Christianity spread through Europe, this tradition appropriated, fused with, and replaced several midwinter traditions, such as the birth of God of the Wood on the winter solstice. This nature-based deity literally brings the light and warmth back into the world as the days finally grow longer instead of shorter. In addition to a festival of eating and drinking (lots of drinking), popular Christmas tradition involves putting candles and electric lights on everything, particularly an evergreen tree. That tradition did not come from Nazareth.

Notice that these traditions change over time and will even be different in each family or community. Just as no ethnic group is a monolith, neither is any religious or secular culture. There’s so much room here for worldbuilding, not to mention internal as well as external conflict. Some progressive Jewish families have introduced an orange among the symbolic food (roasted egg, lamb bone, bitter herb, et al.) of the Passover Seder plate, meant to remind us of the struggle of women, lgbtq+ folks, and people of color in Judaism as well as all who face intersectional struggles and are often left out of the popular image of the Jewish community.

I have a Jewish mother and an essentially Unitarian father. I grew up with secular Christmas as well as a heritage-rich Hanukkah, but I’ve always gravitated toward Pagan traditions. As a kid, I was particularly smitten with the Egyptian and Greco-Roman pantheons and stories, and I assume this is because I grew up in Miami, Florida. Flowers, fruit, and flowing water made more spiritual sense to me than the scarcity theme prevalent in Abrahamic traditions. This is the sort of subtlety that can communicate the history of a culture; temperate or tropical traditions are more likely to celebrate abundance and indulgence. Desert cultures are more likely to emphasize struggle, scarcity, and abstinence, but also patience and most importantly, charity. It’s no coincidence that Islam, Judaism, and Christianity share these values and emerged from cultures living under harsh political and geographical conditions.

This brings us to another important subtlety of cultural norms. How hot is “hot?” How cold is “cold?” For that matter, how far is “far?” Does “nice” mean polite and friendly, or does it mean kind and empathic? These are the questions that shape so many nuances of a community and its culture, whether macro scale or micro. And don’t overlook the secular traditions”“what does Tax Day tell us about capitalist cultures? What about the Queen’s Jubilee? For that matter, what about Juneteenth?

For more on this, please join me for Christmas in Narnia: Creating Traditions for Fictional Cultures on December 10th. Happy holidays!

Bio:

Evan J. Peterson is an author, game writer, and Clarion West alum. His latest book is METAFLESH: Poems in the Voices of the Monster (ARUS Entertainment), and recent work includes Drag Star! (Choice of Games), the world’s first drag performance RPG. His writing appears in Weird Tales, Arcana: The Tarot Poetry Anthology, and Queers Destroy Horror. Evan’s serial novel, Better Living Through Alchemy, will be published in 2023 by Broken Eye Books. linktr.ee/evanjpeterson can tell you more.

Site: www.evanjpeterson.com
Twitter: @evanjpeterson
Insta: @evan.j.peterson