Stories that Heal
Classes
&
Workshops
Victoria Costello
My classes are administered by the national writers' organization, WritingWorkshops.
Follow the links under each class to read the complete description on the WritingWorkshops.com website. You can also go there to apply (only necessary for Advanced Autofiction), register, and to arrange payment, either in full or monthly amounts.
When Memoir Becomes Autofiction
A six-week class for beginning and intermediate writers who wish to explore the why's and how's of fictionalizing key events from their lives in a new work of autofiction.
Starts on September 8, 2025
Writers taking this class should begin with a least a tentative idea of their subject and a first draft of minimum ten pages. They should plan on revising this draft, perhaps also their premise, based on constructive feedback received from the instructor and fellow writers.
There are a variety of practical and creative reasons for a memoirist to go the autofiction route.
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You have parents, siblings, or adult children who would be hurt, possibly never speak to you again, if you told a story involving them as straight memoir.
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You’re missing large parts of your family story and have no choice but to speculate on what happened and why.
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Your research has led you to ancestors you never knew whose voices you can’t get out of your head.
You want to write a novel featuring a version of you that doesn’t match who you are in real life.
Every class will include a brief lecture covering a single aspect of craft that applies equally to memoir and autofiction, including voice, characterization, point of view, structure, scene, setting, and dialogue. Some classes will contain a generative writing exercise, such as switching the point of view of your WIP between its main and secondary characters. Selected readings from published authors of autofiction, including the instructor, will be read and discussed.
By the end of this 6 wk. course, participants will draft, workshop, and revise a ten to fifteen-page chapter that will serve as the prototype for chapters in a longer work of autofiction. You will learn how to:
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Create a main character who begins as you but then significantly departs from you and your life.
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Put that character in a situation to tell a story that insists on being told by you.
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Create a coherent plot with a beginning, middle, and end that tests your main character and brings about significant change.
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Construct a narrator and a point of view that best serves your narrative.
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Choose a piece of this story to write as a ten-page first draft
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Balance telling and showing
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Write scenes with believable dialogue
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Revise these pages to find the deeper truth of your story.
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Workshop your story.
Register at
WritingWorkshops.com Have questions?
SNEAK PEEK
Why re-imagine your life? Hint: It's how your healing begins. Watch the video for more details.
“I got so much from this class. It was informative and so much fun! It really infused some life back into me, which was my hope."
Alison L, Los Angeles
"Thank you, Victoria. You've given me the encouragement I needed to feel like this is a worthwhile project."
Pat Stafford, NC
"You offered honest, valuable feeback along with a personal touch. Your insight and sense of humor made the workshop comfortable and rewarding. ”
Paul B. CA.
INTERMEDIATE AUTOFICTION:
Nail Your Protagonist
To Find Your Plot
A 12-week course for intermediate and advanced writers.
This workshop is right for you if...
You’re fictionalizing important aspects of a story about something that happened to you. That is, you’re writing a true story that would fit neatly in the memoir category if it didn’t include these departures from memory and known facts. In other words, this is a workshop for both memoirists and fiction writers using both genres in a single piece of writing.
AND
You have the bones (5 to 10 pages) of a work in progress — including a protagonist who is some version of you faced with a problem — and you need more narrative writing craft and feedback to take your story to the next level.
What is meant by the bones of a story?
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You have identified the version of you through whose eyes this story is told.
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You have narrowed down the problem or precipitating event that makes this character’s life impossible to continue as it is, or was.
Aspects your story may lack, that you will refine in this course:
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A deeper understanding of your protagonist that includes both their surface want —usually some form of getting life ‘back to normal’—and a deeper want, which underlies their new situation.
2. A plot driven by complications arising from this
mismatch and a change they must make if they’re
going to resolve the problem.
Download a full course syllabus
INTERMEDIATE AUTOFICTION is a 12-week course, limited to eight motivated writers.
This class starts Wednesday, October 22, 2025, and concludes February 17, 2026. (Including two weeks off between Dec 17-Jan 7).
We meet bi-monthly (2x each month), once with the whole class of eight, and a second monthly meeting dedicated to a smaller group workshop. Meetings will take place on the first and third Wednesdays of each month, from 6 to 8pm ET.
Open to intermediate and advanced writers. Also open to anyone who has taken Victoria’s introductory 'When Memoir Becomes Autofiction' course.
This workshop will be useful for memoirists or creative nonfiction writers who wish to learn more fiction writing craft to apply to a memoir in progress —without fictionalization.
Applications with pages are not required for this class.
Cost: $1200. Payment can be submitted in whole or in monthly payments. Register and arrange payment at WritingWorkshops.com.
More info/register at
WritingWorkshops Questions?
Workshop Format
01
Mini-lectures on the theory and craft of narrative writing — adapted for the hybrid genre of autofiction which combines conventions and techniques drawn from both nonfiction and fictional storytelling.
02
Live interactive Q&A and discussion of these topics.
03
Small group workshops for critiquing participant pages.
04
Extensive verbal and written feedback from fellow writers and instructor on each participant’s work-in-progress.
Transform and Publish Your
Trauma-Informed Story
A 12-month workshop and mentorship
Starts April 2026
Aspiring authors of life-inspired fiction are often warned against bringing individual or family traumas into a writing class, with many instructors warning, “this is literature not therapy.” After publishing an award-winning memoir and a debut novel reflecting my own experience of intergenerational trauma, then finding unprocessed trauma often hindering the creative process of my writing students, I developed a new approach to fill this learning gap.
In this year-long class, I teach storytelling using trauma-informed craft lectures and traditional workshopping, combined with a group role-play process adapted from psychotherapy.
THE COURSE
Consists of six writers meeting twice each month with the instructor and class, with each writer receiving an additional five, one-on-one meetings with the instructor to review individual progress. This course is open to intermediate or advanced writers with a first draft manuscript of autobiographical fiction underway. The six writers selected for this course must commit to generating a monthly minimum of twenty new pages. They must also provide written and verbal feedback on an average of forty pages each month.
Our monthly, full group, Zoom meetings will consist of:
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A mini-lecture addressing a topic specific to auto-fictional writing: “Creating a protagonist who is you but not you” and “Adapting the traditional three-act story structure for a trauma-centered, narrative.
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Group role play and guided visualization: An instructor-led process to mine character and thematic insights focused on one writer’s WIP.
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Workshop: Verbal feedback on two participants’ works-in-progress. By year’s end, each writer’s work will be workshopped four times.
Each individual writer also receives from the instructor:
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Five, one-on-one manuscript consultations, scheduled approximately every other month, to review individual progress.
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A written and verbal review of each writer's complete first draft at the end of the year-long course.
Application requirements and process:
Any writer working on a manuscript of autofiction — of at least 15,000 words or 50 pages — underway may apply for this course. Ten sample pages from this work-in- process must be submitted for review by the instructor prior to acceptance. A maximum of six motivated writers will be accepted for this course.
Cost: $3400. Payment is accepted by check, Paypal, credit card, and can be submitted in whole or in monthly payments. Apply and arrange payment at WritingWorkshops.com.
ADVANCED AUTOFICTION
This unique approach addresses students’ twin goals of completing a book length work of literature intended for publication, while also achieving some measure of personal healing.
See full course description for Advanced Autofiction and apply WritingWorkshops.com
Three essays on autofiction:
theory and craft
By Victoria Costello
Can We Talk About Autofiction?
"It seems to me that readers assume an author’s life and art overlap to some degree. In asking the question of an author, they’re simply wanting to know how much. Maybe there’s a better answer than zero."
Read more
On Reality, Fiction and Neurodiversity
"As an author with lifelong major depression and as the mother of a neurodiverse son, I felt compelled to tell the story of ORCHID CHILD in all its complexity, even if I had to break a bunch of genre rules to do it."
Read more
