Beyond Worldbuilding: Showing Off Your World In Story with Kate Maruyama

Longing to move beyond simply explaining your science fiction, fantasy, or horror world? Learn to invite readers to step into the shoes of the characters navigating it.

This class will help you identify and tighten the quirks, characteristics, and operational realities of your ghost story, faraway planet, future universe, or fantastical world, not only making it adhere to form but helping it vibrate through your characters, themes, and leitmotifs to make your short story or book come together swiftly. The second session will provide opportunities to workshop concepts in your world and iron out any questions you have, and will also give you a roadmap for moving forward. 

This two-week class will help you:

• Identify the supernatural, future science, or magic in the world of your story,
• Develop The Rules that apply to your fictional world,
• Expand strategies for worldbuilding through your characters and their view of the world,
• Enhance the supernatural to underline tension, action, and emergent themes, and
• Thread the lore: simple tricks for threading the progression of rules and lore of your own world that tighten the entire piece.

Participants will leave with:

• A new angle on their story and a specific plan for making its world stronger,
• Tools for revision that can make what has emerged in class thrum through your whole work, and
• Strategies on worldbuilding to take into new stories.

Participation Requirements: Though these sessions are generative spaces, attendees will be asked to participate via chat, voice, and/or video.

This class meets online for two, two-hour sessions.

Meeting Dates:

September 18 & 25, 6:00 - 8:00 PM Pacific Time

About the Instructor: 

Kate Maruyama is the author of The Collective (Writ Large) Bleak Houses (Raw Dog Screaming) and Harrowgate (47 North). Her novella Family Solstice was bagged Best Fiction Book of 2021 by Rue Morgue Magazine. Her short work has appeared in numerous anthologies and journals including Asimov’s and Analog SF&F. She teaches at Cal State LA, at Antioch University Los Angeles, and Writing Workshops Los Angeles. She serves on the Board of Directors for the Shirley Jackson Awards and for the Diverse Works Inclusion Committee for the HWA. She writes, teaches, cooks, and eats in Los Angeles. Website 

This event will be held in Zoom. By registering for this class, you agree to follow the Clarion West Code of Conduct and Zoom policies. 

Limited Free Seating: 

We offer a percentage of seats in every class to People of the Global Majority (Asian, Black, African, Latina/o/x, Middle Eastern, Indigenous, Pacific Islander, and/or have been racialized as 'ethnic minorities') for free, regardless of financial need. 

Eligible folks should complete this form to enter the lottery for free seats.  If a seat is available, we will email you 7-10 days before the class begins. For more information, see our equity and inclusion policies.

Sliding Scale Pricing:

The Supporting Tuition rate is shown for each class or workshop for folks who can pay it. Paying the Supporting Tuition rate enables us to continue to pay our staff and instructors equitably, as well as support access to classes for others who may be in a different situation. 

The Helping Hands rate is available to folks under more limited economic circumstances, no matter your background.

For more information, see our financial aid policies.

Our Refund Policy:

Clarion West will refund all class fees if the request is made 30 days before the class date. Refund requests made within 30 days of the class will be honored if we can fill the seat.

Any exceptions are subject to approval by our workshop staff.