What the Story Needs: The Art of Rewriting
Tue, Sep 15
|Zoom
A five-week intensive for writers ready to transform their work beyond surface-level editing. Using up to 30 manuscript pages, writers will explore character, structure, conflict, voice, and emotional truth while developing practical strategies for deeper, more intentional rewriting.
Time & Location
Sep 15, 2026, 7:00 PM – Oct 13, 2026, 9:00 PM
Zoom
Details:
What the Story Needs: The Art of Rewriting
A 5-Week Intensive on Deep Rewriting & Narrative Transformation with Eli Villamán
Finishing a draft is not the end of the writing process. In many ways, it’s where the real work begins.
You have pages. You may even have a complete draft. But something isn’t working. Maybe the characters feel flat, the tension disappears, the structure feels uneven, or you’ve received so much feedback that you no longer know where to begin. Rewriting the Story is a five-week intensive for writers ready to return to work already on the page and transform it at a deeper emotional, structural, narrative, and stylistic level.
Rather than approaching rewriting as simply correcting sentences, cutting paragraphs, or responding to individual notes, writers will learn how to step back and ask a more important question: What does this manuscript actually need? Throughout the course, participants will wor…
Tickets
Early- What the Story Needs
Sale ends
Aug 31, 10:00 PM
Early Bird Ticket includes all five sessions, hands on manuscript analysis and rewriting exercises, craft instruction, and guided work on up to 30 pages of your manuscript.
$360.00
What the Story Needs
Ticket includes all five sessions, hands on manuscript analysis and rewriting exercises, craft instruction, and guided work on up to 30 pages of your manuscript.
$425.00
Goes on sale
Sep 01, 12:00 AM
Week 1
Week 1 — Rewriting vs. Revision vs. Correction Understanding What It Means to Rewrite: What does it actually mean to rewrite a story? Writers will learn to distinguish between rewriting, revision, editing, and correction and begin approaching their manuscript not as something that needs to be “fixed,” but as work that can be rediscovered, questioned, and transformed.
$60.00
Week 2
Week 2 — The Rewriting Process Reading, Diagnosing & Building a Rewriting Plan: When everything feels like it needs attention, where do you begin? This session teaches writers how to step back, identify the problems that matter most, and develop an organized rewriting plan rather than attempting to change everything at once.
$60.00
Week 3
Week 3 — Character, Desire & Emotional Truth Rewriting Beneath the Surface: Sometimes a scene works on paper but still feels emotionally flat. Writers will look beneath plot and action to examine character, desire, motivation, and emotional truth—and explore how strengthening these internal forces can transform the story.
$60.00
Week 4
Week 4 — Conflict, Structure & Scene Rewriting Rebuilding Narrative Movement: Sometimes a scene doesn't need better sentences. It needs to become a different scene. Writers will examine conflict, tension, structure, and narrative movement while learning how to dismantle scenes, identify what isn't working, and rebuild them with greater purpose and energy.
$60.00
Week 5
Week 5 — Voice, Radical Rewriting & Reconstruction Letting the Manuscript Become Something New: The final session brings the work together through voice, language, and stylistic rewriting while confronting one of the hardest parts of the process: letting go. Writers will experiment with more radical approaches to rewriting and consider what becomes possible when they allow the manuscript to evolve beyond its original form.
$60.00
Total
$0.00