Interiority: A Heart-Pounding, Breathtaking Workshop lef by Amber Wheeler Bacon

When it comes to writing fiction, Kurt Vonnegut said to “Be a Sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them—in order that the reader may see what they are made of.” Got it. We can do that. But as we do, it can become difficult to show readers how characters think and feel about all of these awful things happening in their lives. In first drafts, “thoughts” and “feelings” can often be written involving the heart and lungs, focused on heartbeats, breathing rhythms and all sorts of skipping, palpitating, throbbing, panting, catching and swallowing.

In this class, we’ll work on engaging with a character’s thoughts and feelings in ways that move beyond these cliches, using specificity and deepening character. This will be a generative workshop. Using your own characters and their harrowing situations, we’ll look at, discuss and practice Rebecca Makkai’s four…