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Off Campus Writers' Workshop - OCWW

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Sarah Stone - The Art and Craft of the Inner Life; or, Gripping Interiority

  • February 11, 2027
  • 9:30 AM - 12:00 PM
  • REMOTE - ZOOM ONLY

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Fiction makes use of all the ways we can know another person: dialogue, physicality (appearance and gestures), what others say about them, action, and so on. But it’s interiority that can reveal the deepest and most illuminating sense of their histories and secrets, what they’re obsessed with and excited about, how they see the world and everyone around them, their moments of brilliance, and also the logic behind their bad decisions and impulsive moves. Interiority can also give the reader insight into aspects of the characters’ lives that they may not fully understand themselves. In this session, we’ll do some close craft-based reading, including selections from Hilary Mantel and Edward P. Jones. We’ll have a sequence of writing prompts to help us add narrative tension to interiority, manage time/proportion, and show unexpected, believable discrepancies and complexities that deepen both the characters and the story or novel.

SARAH STONE is the author or co-author of four books, including Marriage to the Sea (March 2026); Hungry Ghost Theater, a finalist for the 38th annual Northern California Book Awards; and, with Ron Nyren, Deepening Fiction: A Practical Guide for Intermediate and Advanced Writers. Her work has appeared in Image, Ploughshares, StoryQuarterly, The Millions, Scoundrel Time, The Believer, 100 Word Story, CRAFT, and Alta Online, among other places. Sarah has taught for UC Berkeley, the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers, and Stanford Continuing Studies, and has written for Korean public television, reported on human rights in Burundi, and looked after orphan chimpanzees at the Jane Goodall Institute.

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