Instructor: Len Leatherwood
Maximum Enrollment: 15
Class Term: 10/01/2026 - 10/19/2026
Tuition/Fees
SCN Member: $125
Non-Member: $140
This course is the second in the nine-month Art and Craft of Storytelling series, but it also stands on its own as a complete month-long course. This month, we focus on creating compelling people on the page—whether they are imagined characters, people we remember, or versions of ourselves. By exploring desire, contradiction, formative experiences, mistaken beliefs, and revealing details, we’ll discover how to move beyond surface description and create people who feel complex, specific, and fully alive to the reader.
Class synopsis
To create compelling characters, we will explore desire, contradiction, formative wounds, mistaken beliefs, and the details that make remembered or imagined people feel fully alive.Class description
This month, we will explore how writers create fully dimensional people, whether we are writing about someone we know, someone we remember, ourselves, or a character we have imagined. We will look beneath surface traits to the forces that shape behavior: desire, formative wounds and experiences, mistaken beliefs, contradictions, and the specific details that make a person unmistakably themselves.
Class goals
Distinguish a character's surface wants from the deeper desire or need beneath them.
Identify formative experiences that influence present behavior without turning a character into a diagnosis.
Recognize a mistaken belief—a conclusion a person carries about themselves, other people, or the world—and understand how it can generate story.
Use contradiction to create complexity rather than inconsistency.
Select physical, behavioral, sensory, and environmental details that reveal character.
Reveal people through choices, gestures, dialogue, objects, habits, and interactions instead of relying primarily on explanation.
Apply these techniques to memoir, personal essay, fiction, and flash.
Class communication method
The course includes two prerecorded instructional videos with handouts and writing exercises, along with two live, 90-minute Zoom sessions. The first Zoom meeting will focus on discussion and guided practice. The second will serve as a salon in which students may share work, receive supportive feedback, and learn from one another’s examples. Course materials, announcements, Zoom links, and instructions will be provided electronically. Students will need reliable internet access and the ability to view videos, download materials, and participate in Zoom meetings.Class outline
Week 1 — What Lies Beneath (Mon., October 1)
Video lesson exploring desire, formative wounds and experiences, mistaken beliefs, and the inner forces that shape behavior. Companion handouts and worksheets will help you apply these ideas to your own writing.
Week 2 — Practice & Experiment (Wed, Oct. 7)
Live Craft Zoom. We’ll use the “Character Iceberg” and other exercises from the handouts to explore character, then write, share, revise, and experiment together.
Week 3 — Bringing People Fully to Life (Mon, Oct. 12)
Second video lesson on contradiction, telling details, gestures, objects, voice, and interaction. Additional handouts and exercises will help you practice these techniques in your own work.
Final Gathering — Writers Salon (Mon. Oct. 19)
Share a short piece featuring a remembered or imagined person and receive supportive, craft-focused feedback.
October’s schedule is slightly compressed to accommodate Len’s trip to Italy, but participants will receive both video lessons, practical handouts and worksheets, the live Craft Zoom, and Writers Salon.
Class time commitment
Students should plan to spend approximately five to seven hours over the course of the month: Two 90-minute live Zoom sessions Two prerecorded instructional videos Time to read the handouts and complete the exercises Optional time to revise and prepare a short excerpt for the salon Students may work at their own pace between meetings. The exercises can be applied to a new idea, a work in progress, or a completed draft in need of revision.Instructor bio
Len Leatherwood, the Program Coordinator for SCN’s Online Classes program, has been teaching writing privately to students in California for the past 26 years. She is a nationally recognized writing coach and award-winning author. Len has published work in flash fiction and nonfiction and has been nominated for two Pushcart Prizes. Her novel, Hope in a Time of Dying, won the American Fiction Award in the LGBTQ+ category. Her blog, 20 Minutes a Day, can be found at lenleatherwood.com.
