Hosted by PennWriters
ZOOM Class Meeting Dates: November 4, 11, 18, & 25 (Tuesdays)
7:00 PM to 9:00 PM
In this immersive four-week course, writers will explore the power of settings and props to enhance characterization, evoke emotion, and add depth to their stories. Through a series of interactive exercises and guided discussions, participants will learn how to create vivid, purposeful settings and symbolic props that reflect and shape their characters’ inner journeys.
Throughout the course, students will explore examples from literature and film, such as James Michener’s “Shogun”, Michael Connelly’s “Lincoln Lawyer,” “Rosaline Palmer Takes the Cake,” and Tim O’Brien’s “The Things They Carried” to understand how masterful writers employ settings and props to deepen characterization and create immersive, emotionally resonant stories.
By the end of the course, students will have developed a comprehensive toolkit for crafting purposeful, evocative settings and props that elevate their storytelling and engage readers on a profound level. This course is designed to benefit fiction writers of all levels of experience and is not specific to any particular genre or medium.
$75 members
$100 non-members
2025 Workshop Schedule
- February: The Idea Factory: A Genre-Hopping Writing Workshop
- April/May: First Draft Forward Screenwriting Workshop
- 2025 Annual PennWriters Conference – Multiple Workshops
- July: From Page to Screen – Crafting Visual Stories
- September: Script Surgery – The Art of Precision Rewriting
- November: The Things They Carry
