Welcome to the Lesson Library. All lessons are available individually and in coursepacks.
Description Prescription
This batch of lessons comes from a course that I first taught in 2010 in a live setting at The Loft Literary Center of Minneapolis. These lessons go beyond the typical prose description techniques, to cover such topics as Describing with Reverence, Describing Past Events, and Describing Character Attitude.
Each lesson is rooted in examples from exemplary short fiction, novel, essay, or memoir. The techniques can be used in any of these forms. Authors we examine include Tobias Wolff, Deborah Eisenberg, and Marissa Silver.
The full coursepack is 7 lessons. Get Lesson 1 for free and try it out! No commitment, no email, no checkout needed to. Just follow the button. Or scroll on for more details.
Description Prescription
Lessons are delivered as PDFs to your inbox after checkout. Lengths run from 3 to 6 pages each, the longest being 2,050 words. Each document contains:
- selections from the published works
- analysis and exploration of the passages
- demonstration of the descriptive technique
- a writing prompt
Pricing
Individual lessons are $15 each. Or get all 6 for $75. Technical support is available, and returns are allowed. See terms and conditions at checkout.
Contents
See below.
Lesson 1 ~ Describing Attitude, looking at Tobias Wolff's short story "Casualty" from The Night in Question.
This one is available for free.
Lesson 2 ~ Describing Past Events, looking at Marissa Silver's short story "Night Train to Frankfurt" from her collection Alone With You.
Lesson 3 ~ Describing with Wonder and Attention, looking at excerpts from Nicholson Baker's 1988 novel Mezzanine.
Lesson 4 ~ Describing Indirectly, looking at excerpts from Deborah Eisenberg's short story "Rafe's Coat," from The Collected Stories of Deborah Eisenberg.
Lesson 5 ~ Describing Tersely, looking at the short story "A Skirmish" by Thomas McGuane, from To Skin a Cat.
Getting touch-ups!
Lesson 6 ~ Describing with Reverence, looking at a selection from James Salter's memoir, Burning the Days.
Lesson 7 ~ Describing Life, looking at the essay "Spit in the Mitt" by William Gass from Life Sentences.