Think you never have time to write? Think again. Mary Robinette Kowal wrote her first Hugo-nominated short story "Evil Robot Monkey" in ninety minutes. If you have ninety minutes, you can have a story -- all it takes is understanding how to make every word work double-time. In this workshop, learn the same techniques she uses to create new fiction. Through exercises focusing on viewpoint, dialogue, and plot, you'll learn how to let nothing go to waste. By the end of this three day workshop, participants will be given a writing prompt and complete their own short story.

Classes will be taught via Zoom from May 19th-21st, 2025

Each session, you will be given an exercise that builds on the previous session. Classwork will be uploaded to a shared Google Drive folder visible only to you and your classmates. The class will be divided between lecture and group critique. The class is capped at eight students, to create a class size that allows the most interaction, feedback and personal attention for each of you.

Class requirements: You need an interest in writing short stories, but you do not need to have written or published anything yet. You also must be able to use Zoom on a computer. The tablet form has limited functionality. (Note: You don’t need a web camera, although they’re useful, but you do need a working microphone, the internet and some speakers so you can hear us).

This is an intensive workshop, so do not plan anything else for the days of the intensive.

Schedule

• Monday: 2 pm to 6 pm eastern time – Toolbox introduction
• Tuesday: 10 am to 10:00 pm - Taking the tools for a spin. Through guided writing exercises, you’ll write a story over the course of the day.
• Wednesday: 10 am to 7:00 pm - Revising for language and structure. Writing is only half the story. Learning to revise and listen to feedback is just as important.

About the Instructor

Mary Robinette Kowal is the author of the Hugo, Nebula, and Locus award winning alternate history novel The Calculating Stars, the first book in the Lady Astronaut series which continues in 2025 with The Martian Contingency. She is also the author of The Glamourist Histories series, Ghost Talkers, The Spare Man and has received the Astounding Award for Best New Writer, four Hugo awards, the Nebula and Locus awards. Her stories appear in Asimov’s, Uncanny, and several Year’s Best anthologies. Mary Robinette has also worked as a professional puppeteer, is a member of the award-winning podcast Writing Excuses, and performs as a voice actor (SAG/AFTRA), recording fiction for authors including Seanan McGuire, Cory Doctorow, and Neal Stephenson. She lives in Denver with her husband Robert, their dog Guppy, and their “talking” cat Elsie. Visit her online at maryrobinettekowal.com.

Reviews

I can recommend this workshop to anyone interested in learning more about the writing process, especially for writing short stories. Mary Robinette made the entire intensive weekend a wonderfully informative and interactive experience for the attendees. Your active participation, creativity, and dedication to learning and writing will make this workshop a transformative experience that will positively impact your writing. - Rick Dennis

This class exceeded my expectations in every way. Mary Robinette Kowal over delivers. She is professional and attentive. Her teaching style, lessons and presentation allowed me to complete the workshop with a finished short story! M. R. took great care and thought in addressing my questions and concerns. She gave me tools to bring home that will enable me to revise my story and write another. M.R. was overly generous with her time, spending many hours teaching, guiding, and encouraging the small group. Now, I am out of excuses, so I will write! Thank you! - Steven Novick

For anyone thinking about signing up for this or any of Mary Robinette's courses, I can certainly recommend the value of doing so. - Leane Parsons

This course covers an amazing amount of ground in just a few days and does it in such a supportive, generous yet rigorous way. The 'Intensive' part of the title is for real. Applying the techniques in a logical sequence allowed every student in the class to build a story from the ground up. The feedback process gave everyone tools to elevate their work another notch - landing the ending better, deepening characters, answering questions an earlier version raised. On a personal note, this really got me unstuck and excited about bringing other story ideas to fruition. Cannot recommend it enough. - Keith McCormick

Trying to condense everything I learned in this class into a succinct review is impossible, but suffice to say that this course delivered on its promise to be an intensive workshop and did everything it promised in the description without any fluff. I really enjoyed both the exercises to grasp concepts and our longer project of writing a short story. The pace was quick but not overwhelmingly so, and it did a good job of keeping me motivated without having time to fall into second guessing myself. There's a lot of good information here on both structural and sentence level writing and the environment is very welcoming and nurturing to both newbie and more experienced writers. If you're on the fence, I'd suggest going for it. You'll be surprised at how much you learn and accomplish over one weekend! - Gloria Wickman

Refund Policy

You can request a refund until May 10th. The refund will not include the .65 booking fee or the 3% credit card fee.