I’m teaching a course this fall! Join me!
Hi, beloved reader.
Did you know that “write June newsletter” is still on my to-do list?
…it’s true.
I have been meaning to send out a newsletter for the last few months and keep finding it slipping through the cracks. I have excuses though! So many! And good ones, to boot! We bought a house!? (Our very first!) We moved! We had travel (and experienced cancelled flights galore), family weddings, emergency room visits, family deaths and funerals, and, with my daughter starting daycare, have had a seemingly endless cycle of illnesses strike our cursed little household over the last three weeks. Oh, and I’m so, so behind on my next book.
Said book will be going to copyedits in October come hell or high water, though. And then we will ANNOUNCE IT. To you! To the world! I’m finally reaching a point where I’m beginning to feel proud of it, but it’s going to be a long few days of grueling work to get this particular revision over the finish line by Monday (the new/newly pushed back deadline).
But! In the interim! I write to you with something else that I am immensely proud of.
This fall, I am teaching a course called The Dark Fantastic: Crafting Unputdownable Fantasy through the brilliant new platform The Writers Conservatory.
The course formally runs Sept 30-Oct 19, but the lectures are asynchronous, so you can watch them whenever works for your schedule. There will also be live Q&As with yours truly *jazz hands* each Saturday.
Here’s the official course blurb:
The Dark Fantastic: Crafting Unputdownable Fiction explores how techniques deployed by mystery and thriller, the Gothic, and horror can be used to build suspenseful, atmospheric, and thrilling fantasy.
Isabel Cañas breaks down how mysteries and thrillers use pacing, foreshadowing, and red herrings to manipulate reader expectations and create tension and suspense. Students will learn techniques employed by the Gothic to enrich their settings thematically, deepen atmosphere, and embrace the subversive. Finally, students will study how character is the beating heart of horror and will learn concrete methods for bringing emotion to life on the page in vivid, fresh ways.
Throughout the course, Isabel draws on her critically-acclaimed, bestselling novels to demonstrate how stealing the best of what darker genres have to offer can only strengthen your own work, regardless of genre.
I busted my ass putting these lectures together, and believe it or not, I learned so much in the process of doing so… and applied what I learned to the book I’m working on now. I thought long and hard and more analytically than I ever have before about what makes different genres—namely, mystery/thriller, the Gothic, and horror—tick. What is it that makes them so addictive?
This course is guided by my own personal North Star: my foremost goal with any book I write is to make it unputdownable. I want my readers to be at the mercy of the story. I want you glued to the pages until 1am, 4am, muttering “just one more chapter” when you definitely have work or class the next morning. I want that experience for my readers because that is the high that I am constantly chasing for myself as a reader.
And do you know what?
I think I unlocked it.
In The Dark Fantastic, I’ll be breaking down how to steal the most addictive and unputdownable qualities of mystery/thriller, the Gothic, and horror and showing you how to apply it to your own fiction. The module is shelved under the Fantasy courses on The Writers Conservatory, but I made sure that I teach the techniques in such a way that makes them applicable to any genre.
There are so many introductory level classes out there that give pithy (and generally good!) advice like, “try adding more emotion! add tension! make your reader care about the character! stick the landing!” If you, like me, have wanted to fling your hands in the air thinking yes, yes, I KNOW, goddamnit, but HOW though???
I’ve got you.
Topics I cover include bringing emotion to visceral, heart-twisting life on the page, planning and executing utterly addictive tension and suspense, and painting vivid atmosphere… all with extremely nitty gritty, line-level strategies to actually do the damn thing.
In a past life, I had the opportunity to teach a few generations of brilliant (and incredibly intense) undergrads at the University of Chicago. I brought the same attention to detail and pedagogical passion to this class. I promise, from the bottom of my heart, that The Dark Fantastic is nothing short of intellectually rigorous, absolutely bursting with all of my personal writing secrets, and extremely worth your time and money.
I can’t wait to see you in class.
with all my love,
Isabel
PS, I wrote a flash fiction piece! It’s called “Three Things That Happen The Night My Dad Dies,” and it’s out in the world now! I have more short fiction coming out this fall, so I SWEAR you’ll hear from me again soon… probably with that book announcement, tbh. waggles eyebrows Back to editing it!