This offering is through the Great Smokies Writing Program at UNC Asheville.

Meets online via Zoom.
Monday evenings starting 2/20, 6:00-8:30.

NC resident tuition: $395

Out-of-state tuition: $1,841

Our favorite characters feel like people we know. Their conflicts and desires leap off the page, and they linger with us long after a story ends. But writers commonly struggle to create characters whose vibrancy matches people in their favorite books, or in the real world. Even when a character emerges initially with a strong voice and backstory, we often lose that intensity and struggle to rediscover it as a project continues.

In this workshop, we’ll use the Enneagram, which has long been employed as a profound transformational tool for personal growth, to transform our creative writing practice. We’ll dive into the Enneagram’s triads (the gut, the heart, and the head) through teaching, discussion, and the revolutionary Embodiment  Tradition – an experiential, felt sense of the types that creates deep understanding of type.

Then, we’ll use readings and prompts to create characters of each type. We’ll craft backstories, dialogue, motivations, and dreams for  characters, giving them distinct, compelling voices that will carry them through any plot. We will spend half of our time together learning, and half workshopping and sharing characters we’re creating for our own projects. 

Note: No previous training in the Enneagram is required. Feel free to come in with characters (fictional or non-fictional) you’ve already created and would like to workshop.