UPCOMING, July 23, 2025

UCLA Extension Writers Program

Essential Beginnings in Nonfiction

Sometimes the best stories are true. To help you turn your personal experiences, anecdotes from everyday life and family stories into compelling narratives, this workshop teaches beginning writers the basic elements of good storytelling. You learn how to excavate memories and discover fresh or unexpected facets of your life stories. Through weekly exercises, you generate new material and learn an array of fictional techniques to tell your nonfiction story, including how to play with voice, focus on a small unit of time and describe landscape and character. By the course's completion, you have in hand a series of short sketches or a draft of a nonfiction piece.