In this class, we will use the craft books Ursula K. LeGuin’s Steering the Craft and James Wood’s How Fiction Works to practice and better understand specific elements of writing. Topics such as point of view, dialogue, causality, diction and profluence will be discussed, dissected and deployed. While we will be doing a fair bit of writing this will not be a workshop class—our writing will take the form of exercises and short scenes, not complete stories; the focus is on honing technique and understanding what makes for effective storytelling. Both books will be necessary for the class. In addition, while the focus will be fiction, memoirists can benefit just as fully from these strategies.

Instructor: Ben Murphy

Dates: Begins Tuesday, July 7, 2026, and runs every Tuesday for four weeks

Time: 6 p.m. to 8 p.m.

Level: Beginner and above

8 seats max

Location: Redbud HQ, located inside VAE Raleigh, 909 W. Morgan St.

Cost:

$430: true price

$260: base price

$285, $310, $360: donate an extra $25, $50, or $100 to our scholarship fund

(Returning students receive 10 percent off).

A note on pricing:  the “true price” reflects the true cost of the class, which includes paying a fair wage to our staff and instructors, rental fees for the Redbud headquarters and for the community spaces where we host our classes, website and administrative/commerce fees, outreach and advertising to spread the word about our offerings, and the coordination and administration for our community classes, which serve people who could not otherwise access creative writing. We’re not a university or a large corporation and that means we don’t have an operating budget we can rely on; we’re proud to be a small, local, women- and minority-run business that is passionate about bringing the transformative power of the arts to our community. Your tuition helps Redbud with the critical work of keeping the arts accessible to the public. 

We also offer students a chance to donate to our scholarship fund. At check-out, you will be given the option of choosing a donor price. If you choose one of these prices, the extra $25, $50, or $100 will go towards scholarships for students who would not be able to afford our classes otherwise.  Thank you in advance for considering making a contribution to inclusivity and access!

Read the fine print, including our refund policy, here.