Workshop
Mastering Sensory Detail and Description in Fiction: A Craft Seminar
with Aatif Rashid
November 19 • 3:00 PM (EST) - 6:00 PM (EST)
Dates
November 19 • 3:00 PM (EST) - 6:00 PM (EST)
Duration
3 hours
Location
Online
Price
US$75
About the workshop
This one-day craft seminar will explore techniques for writing vivid descriptions and sensory details in fiction writing.
Details
We’ll look at sample excerpts from short stories and novels across a range of literary styles and discuss how each writer effectively captures sensory experience to convey emotion. We'll explore the basics of “show, don’t tell,” the relationship between character emotion and description, the way description helps create vivid and atmospheric settings, and the nature of sentence rhythm in crafting lyrical and effective prose. Students will also practice their own writing through an in-class craft exercise.
Workshop takeaways
• Learn to write vivid descriptions with sensory details. • Discuss short story and novel excerpts and identify great descriptive writing. • Develop your prose style and voice.
About the instructor
Aatif Rashid is the author of the novel Portrait of Sebastian Khan (2019, 7.13 Books). His short stories have appeared in The Massachusetts Review, Metaphorosis, Arcturus, Barrelhouse, Triangle House Review, X-R-A-Y, Maudlin House, The Ex-Puritan, and Pithead Chapel, as well as the anthologies New Moons: Contemporary Writing by North American Muslims (2021, Red Hen Press) and Made in L.A. Volume 4 (2022, Resonant Earth Publishing). He’s also published nonfiction in The Los Angeles Review of Books, Lit Hub, and Alta and he wrote regularly for The Kenyon Review blog from 2018 to 2021. He teaches creative writing classes through the UCLA Extension Writers program.
Learn to write vivid descriptions with sensory details in your fiction