Based on Mitch Wieland’s thirty years of teaching in the MFA program at Boise State, this two-hour seminar examines the structural elements of the propulsive novel—and shows how a character’s inner and outer desires generate action.

In the first hour of the seminar, we will compare ancient narrative patterns to recent brain research into how the human mind responds to story. We’ll look at why and how major turning points draw the reader into a novel, and what is needed to keep them there. We will briefly compare ancient mythic patterns to Aristotle’s Poetics, and then see how these ageless storytelling rhythms manifest themselves in modern commercial and literary fiction, as well as Indie and Hollywood films and prestige television.

The second hour of the seminar will begin with an in-class exercise designed to develop your central protagonist and explore their everyday world, then we’ll choose what disruptive event turns that ordinary life upside down. To round out the class, we will draft loglines for your novel and explore them in a supportive writer’s room-type setting. Throughout our discussion we’ll focus on both the outer or external plot—which is one of achievement or failure—and the deeper inner or emotional plot, which is one of transformation.

This seminar is for writers about to begin a commercial or literary novel, or for writers who have a completed draft and need effective diagnostic tools for revision

Mitch will also discuss his new novel The Ghosts of Okuma in our lecture hall on Friday, November 13th.