Second Chances Spring 2025 – Expanding Horizons

Welcome to the WLT Second Chances sale! From now until 11:59 PM CT June 30, 2025, all of our Spring 2025 class recordings are available to purchase by our Members. Become a member here. Members, log in to your account see the ticket options.

From prose poetry and poetry revision to screenwriting and kidlit, these classes are taught by certified experts in these topics. If you’re hoping to dig deeper and broaden your writing horizons, these are the classes for you.

PLEASE NOTE: This is not a live class registration. When you register, you’ll receive access to previously recorded classes taught for a live audience. Registration includes access to any handouts, readings, and slides the instructor originally shared with students. The videos will be available for viewing immediately upon purchase, and will expire on July 31, 2025.

Descriptions for each class recording can be found below. To purchase access to the recordings, all you need to do is add your preferred tickets to your cart and check out. You’ll then receive an email containing the receipt for your purchase along with a link to the class recordings and any class materials.

To find our No More Excuses classes, click here.

To find our Craft Fundamentals classes, click here.

“Breath & Bite: The Art of Prose Poetry”
with Amanda Johnston

What’s the difference between prose and prose poetry?

At first glance, a prose poem might resemble a standard paragraph of prose, but the reader quickly discovers something more is underlining and moving the text and emotion of the piece. Prose poems can stand alone or make for an interesting series of nuanced moments across a larger collection. Breath, spacing, repetition, and more create sharp poems that elevate the prose structure.

In this class, participants will examine different types of prose poems, the unique elements that make them successful, and how to apply these elements to their work, creating their own impactful prose poems.

What students had to say about the class:

• “Very good class. I am brand new to prose poetry and caught the idea and produced something I like.”

“Introduction to Screenwriting: From Idea to Script”
with Beverly Chukwu

Have you always wanted to write a screenplay, but don’t know where to start? Perhaps, you consider yourself an “idea machine” but aren’t quite sure how to turn any of them into feature-length movies.

Ideas are great, thrilling even, but don’t let the allure of a good idea prevent you from exploring the range of a great one. This class is for writers of all experience levels, who are excited to learn more about the craft of screenwriting while learning and putting into practice skills for transforming their own ideas into vivid, engaging, fleshed-out narratives.

Over the course of three hours, we will briefly breakdown and analyze a critically acclaimed feature script, pitch your own loglines to your peers, boil down your ideas into their most necessary parts, and begin the process of expanding your final loglines into succinct, character-driven beats of a story.

“The Camerawork of Poetry Revision”
with Dr. Taylor Byas

This class uses the language of photography to consider how we might revise first drafts. By considering the position of the “camera” in our scenes, we discover how we might unlock details about our poems that we couldn’t otherwise access.

In that way, prose poems can operate like small films. Prose poems don’t rely on the same conventions as lineated poetry to create surprise (rhyme, both internal and at the end of lines, surprising line breaks, how breath operates, etc.), and so creating surprise and strangeness in the prose poem can be about the “shots.” When are we panning away? When are we getting close-ups? When do the cuts need to be sharp or sudden? When does the camera linger?

These are the questions this workshop asks you to consider. Writers should come away from this workshop with a different understanding of the “first draft,” how it isn’t the first and worst version of a poem, but is actually an opportunity to discover what you cannot see yet and what the poem so desperately wants to be seen.

What students had to say about the class:

• “I really enjoyed the poetry discussions that asked about how it would change if viewed through a different POV. It made me think about my own work and the ways in which I could play more with perspective shifts. The writing exercises are a great way to encourage yourself to write and get those creative muscles moving.”

“The Essentials of Kidlit Craft”
with Meg Eden Kuyatt

In this course, we’ll explore some of the key components that make for good writing in kidlit craft. Our examples will largely come from middle grade and young adult novels, but principles will still apply to other genres including nonfiction and picture books. We’ll partake in exercises to strengthen our own craft, while also reading and dissecting specific examples from contemporary kidlit for what they do well (and in some cases, perhaps not as well). We’ll discuss topics including:

What students had to say about the class:

• “Meg was very knowledgeable and helpful – thoughtfully prepared and enthusiastic.”
• “Loved this class!”