Begin with a Bang: Fantastic First Acts (Online)
Taught by Joe Pfister
Joe Pfister is a writer, teacher, and Tecmo Super Bowl enthusiast living in Brooklyn. His fiction has appeared in such publications as PANK, Juked, and New World Writing. He is a graduate of the MFA Writing program at Sarah Lawrence College and currently serves as fiction editor for The Boiler Journal.
*This is a live, online class via Zoom; it will not be recorded as it's discussion-based.*
When it comes to story, endings get all the kudos. But what about great openings? Stories have to start long before they come to a satisfactory conclusion. So how do we hook our reader and entice them to keep reading? In this two-hour craft course, we will take a deep dive into some startling and memorable first acts in contemporary fiction. We will see how writers employ setting, character, viewpoint, and a central, motivating question(s) to build and shape the audience’s expectations from the very beginning.
