Writing Family

Instructor: Noor Rehman 

 

"All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." — Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

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We often assume that love and understanding make the basis of a family, and yet family life and relations also offer fertile grounds for conflict and, as a consequence, storytelling. Individuals negotiate their identity, desires, fears, and needs within the family matrix. Given how people are raised and treated, they may feel prompted to obey, betray, withdraw, or rebel against their parents and partners. The beliefs and actions of parents have lasting effects on their children, shaping how they respond to their own relationships and life itself. Intimate partners come together due to love and/or attraction, and yet their emotions and power struggles play a pivotal role in guiding their relationship. At the end of the day, people don’t only respond to relations and events, but observe things through the implicit value structures they derive from their parents and families.

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This workshop aims to engage with questions surrounding conflict in family life and its representation in fiction: How do characters negotiate their needs, desires, and conflicts? How do writers portray conflicted emotions and use them to consolidate the identity and drift of characters in their stories? How do writers trace consistency in the emotional landscape of their characters and make transformations and reversals possible and believable? Why is it important to understand the emotional/psychological undercurrents behind the actions of characters? In exploring these questions, the workshop will focus on a number of short stories and explore emotional conflicts within the family constellation.

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