Character Driven Worldbuilding (with the Enneagram and other archetypes))

We're doing a lot of character design this winter, but don't forget that worldbuilding is important, too! This is a new twist on the craft of worldbuilding! We're so excited to welcome author Ash Huang to the Guild! 

Construct worlds based on character personalities, not just the customs and evidence they leave behind. Whether you swerve from traditional ideas of worldbuilding (or keep a warren-like Notion that's only missing tacks and red string), this two part workshop will discuss creating believable characters using personality archetypes without being restrictive: building worlds to illuminate those characters, and how to create meaningful, airtight conflict, no matter the world size. We will workshop your own characters and worlds, and you'll come away with ideas on how to approach your own novel.

Ash Huang has been published in Nightmare, Lightspeed, Ecotone, Apparition Literary, Orion’s Belt, and elsewhere. In 2022, she won the Diverse Worlds Grant from the Speculative Literature Foundation, and is an alum of the Roots. Wounds. Words. Retreat, Tin House Winter Workshop, and the Periplus Fellowship. She was a Reading Fellow for the Tin House Workshop in 2024–2025. She is currently a First Reader at Orion’s Belt, and a Lisa Brown and Daniel Handler Resident with Friends of the San Francisco Public Library. Her speculative fiction examines themes such as inherited and intergenerational stories, nostalgia and misremembering, our complicated relationship with social media and technology, her particular slice of Chinese America, and diasporic co-creation.

This is an intensive 2-session live Zoom class meeting on Tuesdays March 24th and 31st at 7:30pm. Students will have access to the class recordings for 3 months after the class is complete. 

Please note: You will receive the Zoom link and class recording links via the email address you use to purchase the class.