Worldbuilding for Nonfiction (US)
5-week online course for writers in the early stages of drafting or planning a nonfiction work.
Online. Starts October 15
Instructor: Dr. Hanne Blank Boyd

Course Details

5 Tuesdays, starting October 15 to November 12, meeting from 19:00 – 21:00 (New York Time) for 2-hour online sessions. This creative writing course class size is 6 – 12 people. Price includes all fees.

You know how it feels. You’ve just arrived in a brand new place, nothing’s familiar, and wow, there’s a lot to process. Wading into a work of nonfiction can feel just as overwhelming.

What makes it easier? A trustworthy, well-informed guide.

If you write nonfiction (including but not limited to memoir, essay, narrative works, and long-form journalism) you need to be that trustworthy, well-informed guide. Your job is to help your readers understand their new setting: not just where they are but how things work there, what they should see, and what’s so exciting about it.

​

In this workshop, you’ll learn how to use the fiction-writing concept of worldbuilding to build the setting of your nonfiction narrative in ways that generate depth, texture, and empathy.

Time, place, and culture are at least as influential on what happens and how in our nonfictional world as they are in any fictional one… and it matters that we didn’t make them up. Identifying how these attributes inform the ideas you want to communicate and knowing where and how to integrate specifics of setting into your nonfiction, is crucial for work that engages and anchors readers.

​​

​

This course will help nonfiction writers

​

• Identify what is unique and compelling about your specific topic and know how to use this in your writing

• Create depth and continuity through building knowledge frameworks

• Clarify structure through defining and characterizing conceptual foundations

• Give your nonfiction grain and texture that ensures that it stays relevant and never generic

• Generate reader investment by effectively -- and affectively! -- rooting your subject in place, time, and culture.

• This course is for nonfiction writers in the early stages of planning or drafting a long-form or book-length project who want to their readers not to feel like overwhelmed new arrivals but rather think of themselves as invested, clued-in new insiders.

​

About your instructor:

Dr. Hanne Blank Boyd is the author of numerous nonfiction books including Fat, Straight: The Surprisingly Short History of Heterosexuality, and Virgin: The Untouched History. A former academic, she currently does her writing from a small town tucked into the salt marshes and historical pirate coves of the Cape Fear river delta.