The Hero's Journey is a Lie: How to Find Your Outline with Sarah LaBrie

"The Hero's Journey is a Lie: How to Find Your Outline" is a 6-week-long workshop with award-winning memoirist, author, and producer Sarah LaBrie. The class will take place on Zoom on Sundays from Feb 22 to March 29, 2026 from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. PST. Each participant will receive written feedback from the instructor on one piece of writing.

Often, craft guides treat writing like a recipe, as if all it takes to finish a book is to follow a series of predetermined steps. But structure isn't something we impose upon our work. It's something that emerges from the work itself. Here, we'll examine approaches to story structure across forms, drawing on television, feature film, memoir and the novel with the goal of improving our own outlines, treatments, proposals and pitches. Students will be encouraged, but not required, to share work in progress for feedback. This class is appropriate for writers at any stage and in all genres.

Sarah LaBrie is the author of No One Gets to Fall Apart, a 2024 New York Times Notable Book and a finalist for the Writers League of Texas Book Award. Her television credits include Minx (Starz), Blindspotting (Starz), Love, Victor (Hulu) and Made for Love (HBO Max). She’s been granted fellowships by Yaddo, Macdowell and the Austin Film Society and is an alumna of Brown University and New York University’s MFA program in fiction.