Coaching, Consultations, and Classes
“Sarah Stone is among the most insightful and generous readers I’ve ever encountered. From the level of the sentence to the manuscript as a whole, she articulates exactly what a writer most needs to hear. I can’t imagine publishing anything without first showing it to her and receiving her brilliant feedback.”
We can all benefit from someone who can mirror and celebrate our work, help us understand our own voices and the nature of our particular projects, give us a sense of both immediate issues and larger questions that support us in taking our work to the next level.
If you want my help starting, deepening, or completing your novel or story/essay collection, please get in touch with me, tell me something about yourself, describe your project in a sentence or two (or more, if you’d like!), and include the first ten pages of your work. I’ll write you a short response, and if it seems like a good fit, we can set up a coaching session. I try to keep a couple of open slots so that if you’re interested in coaching you can get started fairly quickly.
I also provide responses for a few full manuscripts a year, mostly for my coaching clients and former students. If you are interested in learning more, please use the contact button below to get in touch with me and include a description of your project and the first ten pages. For full books, I ask that we start with at least one coaching session so that we can develop our ways of working together and clarify how we each understand your particular writing project and your writing as a whole.
coaching
Writing a book can be a long journey, and writers can save so much time when they have a guide and companion along the way. Some writers need just a single consultation or a few sessions of coaching, while others want steady help and accountability over a longer period. My response to your work will always include a consideration of your book's human and thematic aspects, in addition to the craft, and our method of working is interactive and respectful of your own wisdom and instincts.
Many of the writers I work with like to meet monthly, though we schedule each session at the end of the previous one to allow for flexibility, depending on your needs. Most often, during our sessions, we look closely at a piece of manuscript. Sometimes we have sessions that are more process-based or generative. Occasionally, we might look at and talk through outlines or plans.
When you send me a selection of the book, along with any questions or ideas you have, I’ll read it over and take notes, and then we have a Zoom or phone conversation in which we explore what you’re already doing beautifully (writers need to hear this!), where questions arise, and what can become stronger in the next draft. The writers I work with like this process because it’s a dialogue, addressing craft and process and human elements of the writing, and we can move fluidly into new areas for discussion depending on what you want and need.
If this sounds intriguing to you, please send me an email with a couple of paragraphs describing your project and the kind of help you're looking for, along with ten pages of the work itself. I’m interested in whatever you have to tell me about the characters and their situation and any issues you’re having with the book. This helps me give you the most useful response. You can write to me at sarah(at)sarahstoneauthor.com or use the button below to get to my contact page. Then I can give you more details about the process, including my rates. I look forward to hearing from you and am happy to answer any questions. It’s crucial for you to find a coach who’s a good match for you, so this initial stage is important.
classes
In addition to my one-on-one work with writers, I teach classes through the Stanford Continuing Studies Creative Writing Program. My upcoming live online (Zoom) novel-writing workshop for books in progress is now full and has a substantial waitlist, but I will be teaching another live online class in the summer, this one on voice (including style and POV).
Meanwhile, the novel classes have filled much more quickly than short-story classes this term, so there’s still a chance to get one of the last spots in Ron’s scene-writing class (novelists can also take this class). Here’s what he just wrote about it on Twitter (yes, I still seem to be there occasionally, and no, I’m not going to call it X): “My new Stanford Continuing Studies scene-writing class starts 4/3. We'll be workshopping stories and novel chapters and discussing stories by Grace Paley, Jhumpa Lahiri, Percival Everett, Lauren Groff, and others. We'll also have weekly in-class writing prompts.” You can see the course description and some of what previous students have said about his classes here and can register for the course here.
“I came to Sarah with a strong sense of what I wanted from my stories. Sarah read them on their own terms and highlighted where the craft could be improved so that the writing elicited the right emotional responses from my readers. Through her guidance I learned to refine my craft techniques and sharpen my sentences; she allowed my stories to breathe and flourish. My scenes and dialogue became more complex and the tension in those moments rose. In a sense Sarah taught me to make my stories into the journey I wanted them to be for my readers.”
“Sarah is probably the best teacher I’ve ever had, for anything ever. She’s incredibly knowledgeable, generous with her time and expertise, and very astute with her critiques, immediately sizing up what the manuscript might need and what the writer might need. I really enjoyed this class and learned a lot.”
“Sarah Stone is an astute, alert, compassionate, and talented writer and teacher who is exquisitely sensitive to the ever-changing needs and challenges of her students. She went out of her way to provide original, insightful feedback to each and every student post and work-in-progress sample. I feel privileged to have been her student.”
“I have had the great fortune to get Sarah Stone’s feedback on my writing for many years, and I always come away from her reading with brilliant notes that give me enthusiasm to dig in to the work again. Sarah is that rare editor: someone who gets inside another writer’s project, really trying to see it for what it is, for what it wants to be, without trying to change its peculiar essence. Her reading is always ‘for’ the work, but it’s also very rigorous. Anyone who is lucky enough to get her editorial input will be sure that she will not ignore failures of nerve or missed chances for complexity and depth. Nevertheless, she delivers her opinions in a way that makes the problems seem clear and solvable. She is widely read—from mainstream to experimental fiction, from literary to genre novels—and she brings her knowledge to the discussion to suggest works that might inspire or inform the project. Sarah is a trusted, sensitive, experienced reader. You would be lucky to have her in your corner.”
“Sarah Stone is an extraordinarily accomplished author, as anyone who’s read her novel, The True Sources of the Nile, can attest. She is also a brilliant, experienced teacher, with the ability to suggest a variety of approaches to the development of character, plot and structure as well as language and style. I’ve been fortunate to have her read and respond to most of the stories included in my first book, and she read my second book, a novel, in at least three different drafts, providing me the feedback and encouragement to press on with new perspective. I enthusiastically recommend Sarah to beginning, intermediate and advanced writers at any stage of their novels or short stories.”
“Working with Sarah Stone transformed my writing. I always felt as though Sarah, an incredibly generous reader, cared about my characters as if they were her next-door neighbors. Deeply curious, she would go to the depths in thinking about their lives within the story, what this moment meant for them, and what motivated them. My stories returned with margin notes that praised interesting moments, phrases, suggested compression, and the kinds of questions that pushed my writing to the next level. In a way that I hadn’t experienced for some time, I saw that Sarah believed deeply in my writing and that she would challenge me to come closer to and explore those truths that fueled it.”
“As a new writer of a debut novel, the idea of having an editor parse through my work was daunting. Sarah made the process as painless as possible, always emphasizing the positive while still ensuring that the manuscript was as good as it could be. She has that rare ability to inspire confidence through what can be a difficult process. At the same time, she taught be how to be a better writer. My manuscript was much improved by her contribution.”
“Sarah Stone is a wonderful writer and a generous reader of other people’s work. She reads thoughtfully, with insight, and I always understand my work better after hearing from her.”
“Sarah approaches your work with a combination of great intellect and open heart. She is a thorough, thoughtful reader whose suggestions for revision are never heavy-handed. Rather, she gives the kind of direction that allows you to find your own path, always respecting the integrity of your voice and your story. Genius!”
“Sarah Stone provided me with a wealth of specific information on how I could improve the novel I am working on. She also provided a nurturing and positive environment in which I felt encouraged to go forward with writing my novel, which is no easy task. This was the best workshop experience I have ever had, and I’ve been in several others that have produced the opposite reaction. In short, she is an amazing teacher, extremely knowledgeable about the craft of writing, and willing to go that mile to impart that information to us, her students. I always felt nurtured and encouraged by her instructive hand in the learning process.”
“Sarah Stone was fantastic. She was informative, enthusiastic, encouraging, inspiring. She guided gently while encouraging us to think about beginnings, characters, plot, voice, settings. She gave us valuable information that will be extremely useful, and she lit a fire under all of us to write and express in our own voices. I would take another course from her in a minute and hope to do so in the near future. This was an excellent course with an exceptional instructor.”
“I’ve taken numerous courses through Stanford online and they have all been good. But Sarah was by far my favorite instructor to date. She was brilliant, inspiring, full of great suggestions resources and feedback, amazingly attuned to each student and their writing, and always kind.”
“A truly great teacher—informed, sensitive, respectful, present, available, incredibly knowledgeable, generous, kind and a terrific communicator.”
“This was the very first class I have ever taken online, and I was a bit unsure of what to expect in beginning the class. Luckily, I had nothing to worry about as Sarah was absolutely the most amazing instructor. Unbelievable amounts of thoughtful, diplomatic, intelligent feedback that was both kind and warmly presented- but at the same time she saw ways for every single writer to improve their work. Each of her suggestions, book recommendations, workshop responses, and comments were individually tailored to each writer’s needs/writing, and she opened my eyes to the possibilities of my work (and of literature in general) more than any writing instructor I have had in the past. Not only would I take another course taught by this instructor, but I plan to actively seek out the classes that she is teaching in the next term! I cannot thank her enough.”
“This is my second online Stanford class with Sarah Stone (and my fifth through the Stanford Continuing Studies program). Sarah is an exceptional instructor; she is a standout with your program and across my lifetime of learning, creatively or academically. Her generosity creates an exceptional online community for writers to celebrate their gifts and directly face areas for improvement. Her quick mind and unique perspective open doors about that are both fascinating and compelling. She is able to offer guidance and constructive suggestions that truly add depth to all of her students’ work. Her experience - as a fantastic writer, teacher and reader - are evident in every single one of her communications. It is a true privilege to learn from her, in all ways. I would sign up for literally any class she taught, sight unseen, because I know that any class she taught would be valuable, enriching and enjoyable.”
“Sarah Stone is both a gifted and dedicated instructor—her class was everything I’d hoped for and more. One of her greatest strengths is that she listens to her students—their work and their words, then zeros in on the level at which she should pitch her comments, lessons, exercises, and class discussions. In this particular class we had a group of smart, talented writers, so Sarah challenged us with more nuanced discussions and critiques, allowing us to take our writing to the next level. She also created a warm and friendly environment—both in the online and Zoom discussions. She stressed the fact that the scenes and chapters we posted were in-progress, freeing us to experiment without worrying about being perfect—both I and others made discoveries and breakthroughs with our characters and stories. I learned so much about the craft of writing from Sarah—from general craft elements (such as leaving a bit of suspense or mystery unresolved at the chapter’s end to entice a reader to turn the page) to specific ones that came up only in my manuscript…. And the impact of her class will reach beyond this fall: she provided such rich and multi-layered lectures and exercises, I plan to work through them all again as I move forward. Sarah also provided a wealth of resources for further study—enough to keep me busy for a year. For these ten weeks, Sarah was our champion—she read every post, answered every question, and made sure every student was heard and encouraged by the whole group.”
“Sarah was amazing. Incredibly knowledgeable, generous in her time and attention to everyone’s assignments, her feedback an amazing combination of detailed suggestions/areas to keep developing and hugely supportive mirroring and comments. One of the best teachers I have ever had, for anything.”