UCLA course with Steven Wolfson

I continue to prepare for my rapidly approaching move from Japan to America. (Thus, the picture for this post is my empty apartment instead of a picture of Steven.) But I have also just completed a totally energizing six-week writing course offered through UCLA Extension called “Conquering Your Story and its Superstructure.” The teacher was Steven Wolfson, a playwright and screen writer. Two years in close succession (2020 and 2022) at the Japan Writer’s Conference, I found his presentations far and away the most interesting and useful of all those I attended. So I contacted him and found out he regularly teaches courses at UCLA.

Here is Steven’s description of the course I took:

“The first fundamental challenge facing all writers, whether novice or professional, is the process of transforming your premise into a compelling, sustainable story. This intensive workshop focuses solely on the art of the story, with an emphasis on such fundamentals as character development, super-objective, rising conflict, scene work, and the all-important quest to find your story’s superstructure. Through a series of lectures, published examples, and in-class writing exercises, writers learn how to spot critical mistakes often made in the initial development of any narrative. This workshop is designed for writers with a specific story they feel passionate about telling. After the course, you have a greater understanding of what makes a story work, along with your own detailed superstructure outline to use in the development, completion, and revision of your story.” This is a great course for anyone who is looking for more structure in their writing—which, I expect, is most writers.

I presented ideas for three novels in the class, and my classmates voted overwhelmingly for a novel titled August. For class, I worked on fleshing out some key scenes. I am excited to complete the novel. It the story of an eighty-two-year-old man named August Norman who finds out he has ALS. He takes a last desperate shot at making something out of the little bit of life he has left. He breaks out of his nursing home, steals his daughter’s car, and embarks on a cross-country quest to find and win back his college sweetheart, May White. But love in their eighties is no simple affair, as they fight concerted family opposition.

I am now working on August pretty much full time. I love this part of writing, where the details of the story reveal themselves. It’s exciting every day.