ANNIE HARTNETT

A white woman in her thirties, with shoulder-length brown hair, wearing hoop earrings and a pink coat with a fake fur collar.

 

 

 

Annie Hartnett is the author of the novels Rabbit Cake (Tin House, 2017) and Unlikely Animals (Random House, April 2022). Annie has received fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and the Associates of the Boston Public Library. She holds degrees from the MFA program at the University of Alabama, Middlebury College's Bread Loaf School of English, and Hamilton College. She lives in southeastern Massachusetts with her husband, daughter, and dog.

Learn more on her site.

SESSION: Plot Engine Tricks: Getting and Keeping It Moving

Whether you’re just starting a novel and unsure where to go with the initial idea, or in the middle somewhere and feeling stalled out, this session will get the wheels turning again. We’ll discuss familiar elements of the novel, but we’ll also use tricks from GrubStreet’s Novel Generator course to shake up your plot: we’ll consider your characters’ secrets and lies, and their general power dynamics. We’ll discuss the Rule of Neat Stuff, and Magic Objects—two tricks to help the novel gel together. We’ll look at some scenes from published books to inspire us, and we’ll discuss what it takes to finish a novel without going mad-hatter crazy.