Program: Writer’s Workshops

Intermediate Program – Rising 6-8 graders

Students in the Middle School Program have the opportunity to try their hand at various genres while learning and practicing key writing techniques. Students explore writing poetry, short stories, creative essays, and more. They learn tips to overcome writer's block, to artfully show the passage of time in writing, and to play with language to make writing more powerful.

Most importantly, as students cultivate their voice as writers, they learn to move beyond proofreading to truly understand editing and refinement as an important part of the writing process. Sharing work in workshops opens students to new views and new ideas and helps students embrace the creative possibilities within each piece of their work.

Senior Program – Rising 9-12 graders

The High School Program turns the intensity and focus up a notch and is excellent preparation for writing college essays and cultivating advanced skills. Afternoon workshops take on greater importance for this group. Students will choose fiction, poetry, or creative non-fiction essays as their focus.

These genre-specific tracks allow students to build nuanced skills in their area of greatest interest. Led by our expert faculty, these workshops create a supportive and welcoming environment that encourages students to think of their writing from alternate perspectives and to tune the fine details of their pieces. In all tracks, workshopping with peers is emphasized, aiming to assist students in learning how to give and receive critical feedback. Learn more about the writing tracks below.

Benefits

The benefits of a Great Books Writer’s Workshop program are many and wide-ranging for both beginners and advanced writers:

• Create an expanded portfolio of work.
• Develop a stronger sense of your voice as a writer.
• Build the skills to express yourself clearly in academic writing.
• Learn critiquing and workshopping skills for college and beyond.
• Connect with a network of supportive and wildly creative peers.

Writing Tracks

Exploratory (Middle School)
The Exploratory track for our younger students emphasizes short stories while also exploring additional forms. Students are encouraged to experiment with writing in multiple genres and with varying types of narration. The focus is on energizing exercises to bolster creativity as students master important skills such as vivid description and more. In past summers, students have worked on scripts, short stories, novellas, essays, poetry, and other creative forms.

Screenwriting (High School - Stanford only)

The screenwriting track explores the fascinating world of writing screenplays. Students will delve into the creative process of writing scripts as well as the technical elements of script formatting.  Between exercises in their morning seminars and mentored writing sessions, students will dig into the nuances of character-building, story development, voice, and dialogue for the screen as they simultaneously explore screenplay form.  And, of course, we'll put these skills into practice to create original screenplays.

Fiction (High School)

The Fiction track focuses on key elements of prose fiction including (but certainly not limited to) point of view, the play and pause of time, character and world building, and dialogue. Students are encouraged to use the creative prompts they are given during supervised writing time to build a portfolio of project starts. The intent of this portfolio is to provide students with inspiration for directions in which to grow their craft.

Non-Fiction (High School)

The Non-Fiction track explores the art of the personal essay. Through reading and examining expository, argumentative, and narrative essay forms, students will engage in the vast creative potential of essay writing. Between exercises in their morning seminars and the examples found in the essays explored, students learn the building blocks of structure, expression, vivid descriptions, and more. Beyond the growth as a writer, this track is especially beneficial for students wishing to cultivate the skills necessary to write a powerful college admissions essay.

Poetry (High School - Amherst and Online only)

The Poetry track will focus on discussions and writing that explores poetic language including but not limited to cadence, rhythm, visual texture, and meaning. Through the guidance of the Academic Directors, students will examine the potential of poetic language compared to more traditional prose forms. Exploratory readings and inspiring writing exercises will push students to develop their voice as a poet and grow their skills in new directions.