Beneath the Surface

Interiority can be a writer's greatest superpower—but only if we know how to do it well. And when we do, it becomes the trapdoor that drops readers into the unfilmable, subterranean currents of a character's mind. Without interiority, a story is merely a sequence of events. With it, those events become an intimate, unpredictable emotional journey, felt rather than witnessed. To render this inner landscape in technicolor detail is to close the distance between the page and the reader's chest.

This generative, interactive workshop explores the one and only thing writing can do that no other art form can: bring an inner life of the mind alive by rendering a consciousness on the page. But the trick is, to bring an inner life alive, we must do more than report it. We must enact it, in all its associative, recursive, non-linear, sensory, and sometimes embarrassingly human specificity. 

Our aim will be to identify the crucial difference between "she felt devastated" (a category) and the actual texture of this particular devastation in this particular mind at this particular moment. About why the unexpected thought—the one that cuts against the expected emotional grain—is almost always the truest thing we can write.

We'll spend three hours with writers who do this at the highest level: James Baldwin, whose sentences seem to think in real time, whose ambivalence stays alive on the page rather than resolving into the feeling the scene seems to demand. Carmen Maria Machado, whose use of the second person in In the Dream House creates a double consciousness that is both the most intimate and the most unsettling thing a pronoun can do. Joan Didion, whose grief memoir contains almost no emotional vocabulary and yet leaves readers feeling more fully inside grief than almost anything else written about it.

We'll diagnose what goes wrong when interiority fails—the emotional report that names the feeling instead of rendering it, the exposition dump that explains what happened rather than letting it happen again on the page. We'll look closely at the three technical components of real consciousness in prose: the logic of association, the intrusion of unwanted memory, the unexpected thought. And we'll write together: first an exercise that asks you to find and keep the thought you would have cut; then an exercise in writing memory not as backstory but as something that arrives uninvited, mid-scene, with its own weight and freight.

You'll leave knowing something about prose that you can't ever unknow. Something that will change how you read, how you revise, and—if you let it—how honest you're willing to be about what's actually happening inside the people you write about, including yourself.

what kind of writer should take this workshop?

Fiction writers and nonfiction writers both, and poets, too! The technique crosses all genres. The invitation is the same: come write a mind from the inside. All genres, all levels.  It is accessible for beginners, yet definitely challenging and inspiring for seasoned writers.

when & where will the workshop take place?
WITD will take place July 30, 4-7 PM Central, via Zoom. Replay will be made available to all registered participants.

what are the requirements?
An open mind and heart. A willingness to show up for six weeks and experiment together. A deep curiosity about language, its power and elasticity. A tolerance for new ideas. An interest in reading and discussion. A commitment to putting some words on the page. A wish to create.

WITD does not discriminate against anyone, regardless of age, color of skin, national origin, race, ethnicity, religion, disability, gender expression and identity, sexual orientation, or anything else. We expect the same from all of our participants.

To note: Writing in the Dark is a come as you are, do what you can workshop where you are never late and always enough. We practice high rigor with strong support and no judgment. In this rich environment, writers can take risks and beautiful work can grow.

what will writers take away?

• A much deepened understanding of how to maximize the power of interiority on the page

• New insight for avoiding the real pitfalls of getting interiority wrong 

• Two or three new snippets generated during the workshop

• Specific guidance on revision

who is the teacher?
This course is led by me, Jeannine Ouellette (The Part That Burns, Split/Lip Press, 2021). I author the cult-favorite, bestselling Substack, Writing in the Dark, which many—including Sarah Fay of Writers at Work, say is better than an MFA (that being said, I do hold an MFA in fiction from Vermont College of Fine Arts. In addition to Writing in the Dark, I teach writing at the University of Minnesota, and through the Association of Writers & Writing Program's Writer-to-Writer Program and the Minnesota Prison Writers Workshop and Brooke Warner’s Magic of Memoir series. In addition to The Part That Burns, which earned stars from Publishers Weekly and Kirkus, the latter of which also selected TPTB as a best indie book of 2021, I have authored several other nonfiction books as well as the children's book Mama Moon. My essays, fiction, and a smattering of poetry have appeared widely in journals and anthologies, won many awards (always second place, runner up, finalist, or honorable mention, proving that it’s okay not to come first). Perhaps most importantly, I’m a passionate, experienced teacher. You can read my full bio here.