Workshops & Work With Me
JULY WORKSHOP
via The Shipman Agency.
$250.00
2 Sessions: Monday + Tuesday, July 14 + 15
6:00-8:30pm ET
Amanda Stern
Amanda Stern is the author of 13 books and a dedicated mental health advocate, serving on the advisory board of Bring Change to Mind, the organization founded by actor Glenn Close. She has taught her workshop Saying the Unsayable at NYU, Aquinas College, and in private settings. In addition to her career as a professional writer, Stern draws on personal experience with panic disorder and a lifelong effort to recover from a debilitating childhood psychiatric diagnosis. Over the past 25 years, she has studied the somatic expression of emotion, and for the past decade, she has taught writers how to access the unconscious, translate visceral experience into language, and evoke deep emotional resonance in their readers.
Feelings are hard to describe—much less to write well. Many writers rely on physical detail and subtext to convey emotion: to signal loss, for example, a bereft father might catch sight of a man swinging his young daughter around on the beach. We feel the gulf between what one man has lost and what the other still has. The more specific the details, the deeper the emotional resonance. Often in literature, what’s visible hints at what’s absent.
But sometimes, subtext isn’t enough. What if your aim is to articulate what can’t easily be said? How do you write the inner experience of that gulf—how it lives in the body, how it pulses in the throat?
In this class, I’ll teach you methods for identifying and expressing the full range of human emotion. You’ll learn how to drop into your body, explore your own somatic cues, and translate them into language that readers can feel. You’ll also learn how to create emotional atmosphere—not just in your characters, but in the space around them. By the end of this workshop, you’ll walk away with tools to elevate not only your writing, but your ability to communicate the complex, internal world we all share.
Workshop Highlights:
Embodied Emotional Access: Learn how to identify and access emotions through the body, using somatic awareness to uncover authentic emotional content.
Language for the Inexpressible: Gain practical tools for translating nuanced, internal experiences into language that resonates deeply with readers.
Atmospheric Emotion: Develop techniques for infusing emotion into setting, tone, and subtext—creating immersive, emotionally charged scenes without overwriting.
This course has 2 full and 4 partial scholarships available. To apply, please fill out this form by Sunday, July 6.
MAY WORKSHOP
SOLD OUT!
THIS WORKSHOP IS LIMITED TO 10 PEOPLE.
Years ago, I developed a 4-hour Master Class (2 hours one evening, 2 hours another evening) called How to Write Complex Emotion and taught it at the New School.
It was such a hit that I kept teaching it when the class ended.
Feelings are hard to describe, much less write about. Most writers rely purely on the physical to get their emotional point across.
To indicate loss to the reader, the writer might rely on subtext, and by doing so, they write about things on the surface: a bereft father catches sight of a man swinging his young daughter around on the beach.
We understand and feel the gulf between what one man has lost and what the other takes for granted. The more details we provide about these men and their daughters, the more we will feel, because these details will signal the weight of absence. Often, in literature, what’s seen represents what’s not there.
Writing emotion through staging and subtext works to elicit the appropriate feeling in your reader, but sometimes that isn’t enough. What if you aim to offer readers articulation for the unsayable? Instead of nodding toward the gulf, how do we describe what the gulf feels like inside our bodies?
In this class, I will teach you methods that will teach you to identify and write all possible emotions. You will learn how to drop inside your body for exploration, pulling the somatic sensations into your throat and onto the page. I will also teach you how to create emotion in the atmosphere. At the end of this class, you’ll have learned how to elevate your prose and communication skills.
Workshops are small and intimate - only 10 spots for every session.
$139
NEXT WORKSHOP:
Saturday, April 26, 2025 (10 a.m.-12 p.m.) | Sunday, April 27, 2025 (10 a.m.-12 p.m.)
DIGITAL WORKSHOP
It's never too late to learn the right tools. Your child's mental health (and yours) is a worthy investment.
In 2018, while touring for Little Panic: Dispatches from an Anxious Life, I discovered many parents and teachers were unknowingly using outdated methods that worsened anxiety - the same ones that affected me 40+ years ago.
These methods probably aren't helping you either.
I began giving talks to expose these harmful approaches and provide better strategies. The response was overwhelming, reaching thousands across schools, seminars, and an entire Canadian island!
For two years, I talked to everyone ages 4-94 about:
Typical vs. atypical anxiety
Translating an anxious child's behavior
Calming overreactions
Confronting fears
Recognizing hidden anxiety
And so much more.
Everything from those two years is now in a 7-part digital workshop. Buy now for instant access, and go at your own pace!
$179
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