I’m delighted to announce that I’m teaching a new class with Stanford Continuing Studies this fall. It’s called Speculative Novel Workshop: The Unreal, the Surreal, the Fantastic, and registration opens Sept. 18!
Speculative Novel Workshop:
The Unreal, the Surreal, the Fantastic
with Nova Ren Suma
Online asynchronous (10 weeks)
September 23 – December 2
Please Note: No class on November 25
Tuition: $1,000
Optional Zoom meeting for discussion and Q&A: Tuesdays, 12–1 p.m. Pacific (recording available to watch later)
Registration opens Monday, Aug. 18, 8:30 am (Pacific)
Course description:
With fantasy and dystopian novels topping the bestseller charts, readers are turning to the unreal not just for entertainment, but to grapple—indirectly and imaginatively—with the deepest questions of our time. This course invites you to indulge your imagination and build a novel that defies the ordinary. Novels intended for adult, YA, or crossover audiences in any speculative genre—including fantasy, paranormal, magical realism, fabulism, science fiction, horror, and dystopian—are welcome.
In the first weeks, we’ll focus on craft elements essential to speculative fiction: world-building, mood and atmosphere, magic systems, and the suspension of disbelief. Writing exercises will foster experimentation across genres as we explore what makes an opening chapter compelling and how much to reveal. Readings may include work by Charlie Jane Anders, Tananarive Due, Mariana Enríquez, Kazuo Ishiguro, Laila Lalami, Victor LaValle, and Madeline Miller. In the second half, we’ll workshop each student’s novel opening. Through supportive critique and a discussion model shaped by each writer’s goals, we’ll engage deeply with your first chapters while also considering your story’s overall arc and possible endings.
Writers should come with a project in mind—new or in progress—and a readiness to take bold, creative leaps.
What to expect from the coursework:
Genre-focused writing exercises will offer ample opportunities for experimentation. Excerpted reading from the openings of different speculative novels will showcase what’s possible and spark craft lessons and conversation.
Students will write the first chapter—up to 5,000 words—of a speculative novel and have their writing workshopped. Workshops will be asynchronous and take place in the discussion threads in Canvas, and will be shaped and directed by each writer’s intentions and opening questions.
There will be plotting and world-building exercises to help you develop your novel and, at the end of the quarter, an opportunity to leap ahead and write a possible ending for your novel as a way to ultimately complete the manuscript one day. From our reading list, you will be asked to choose one speculative novel to read in full and consider the craft lessons it offers.
There will also be opportunities to gain private feedback on your writing from me, and an optional post-workshop Zoom conference with me to reflect on feedback and talk through revision ideas.
Why consider this workshop?
This course is for those interested in writing speculative fiction and exploring different genres under the speculative umbrella. No matter your experience level—from advanced writers to those trying their hand at a first novel—you should come ready to work on the opening of a novel in the genre of your choice. This can be a new novel or a new approach in a speculative novel already in progress.
My preliminary syllabus is linked on the course page for more details and the full ten-week schedule.
For more about Stanford Continuing Studies, check out their FAQ.
(Image by Steve Johnson, courtesy of Unsplash)