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If your story feels flat, removed, or fuzzy, the problem may lie with whether you’ve woven in sufficient, specific context. Vague, generalized writing leads to vague, generalized stories that never fully come to life or capture readers.

Paving in context is more than adding simple description or exposition; it’s filling in distinctive, revealing details about your characters and their lives, personalities, relationships, and circumstances that paint a rich, vivid picture. It’s the particulars that make these story elements real to readers—more than archetypes or stereotypes, or broad, ambiguous settings and backdrops—and give meaning to your stories.

In this course, we’ll explore how concrete context and granular specificity transforms fiction from generic to compelling, deepening character, sharpening conflict, and drawing readers more fully into the world of your story.

Learn how to choose details that do more than describe, pave in context that builds and reveals character, offer vivid details that create atmosphere, and use specifics to heighten emotional impact and support the story’s larger meaning. With plenty of specific, concrete (!) examples from published novels, career editor Tiffany Yates Martin will show writers how context shapes the story and every scene, and how specificity can strengthen its impact and elevate every moment. Authors will gain a stronger understanding of how to make every line on the page work harder to immerse readers in their stories and bring their fiction to life.

What you’ll learn:

• How sufficient, skillfully executed context brings stories more fully to life
• How to identify areas where readers may need more context to fully understand or invest in your story or characters
• How to determine what context is relevant to a story and merits inclusion (and where you may just be cluttering the narrative)
• Determining when readers need particular context—and how much to thread in
• How to fill in sufficient context without momentum-stalling info dumps or spoon-feeding readers
• Making context multitask—why well-executed context is often invisible
• Why context may be meaningless or empty if it’s vague or generic
• How committing to more specific and unique choices will make your stories more universally relatable rather than less
• How to get into the habit of writing in specifics, not generalizations—in every line of your story

Who should take this class

This course is primarily focused on fiction writing for the adult market and will center on examples from fiction, but memoirists may also find it useful.

• Authors writing in any genre of fiction at any stage of the writing process of their career who want to create compelling, marketable stories
• Writers who may not understand exactly what context is or how to effectively weave it into their stories
• Authors who want to enhance their understanding of story and how to effectively bring theirs fully, vividly to life and deeply engage their readers
• Writers who may have heard from agents, editors, or colleagues that their stories feel distant, too safe, or fuzzy, or that they “just didn’t connect with it”
• Writers who may struggle to balance offering enough context to orient readers without overloading them or overwriting

This class is NOT for:

• Poets
• Children’s picture book writers
• Writers of prescriptive nonfiction or essays

What you’ll receive

How do I attend the live class?

This class uses Zoom webinar technology. You will join through your Internet-connected computer or mobile device. When you register, you will receive information via email on how to join the class. If you don’t receive it within 1 hour of registering, please contact us.

• When: Wednesday, October 14, 2026
• Time: 1:00–2:30 p.m. Eastern Time / 10:00 a.m.–11:30 a.m. Pacific Time
• Fee: $25 through Oct. 11, 2026 / $35 if you register after Oct. 11, 2026

The webinar is broadcasted via the internet with live audio delivered through your computer or mobile device speakers. The visual presentation is displayed directly from the presenter’s computer to your computer screen. The Q&A is managed through a chat-style submission system with questions read and answered by the presenter for the entire class to hear.

Closed captions are provided during the live class. We use Zoom’s automated closed caption service (powered by Otter), which is about 80%+ accurate.

Refund policy

If you attend the live class and/or watch the recording, and it does not meet your expectations, contact us for a full refund, no questions asked.

Event Attendance & Anti-Harassment Policy

We strive to provide an environment where all present—whether attendee or presenter—can feel supported. In order to ensure a welcoming event, here is what we expect from all who participate.

• That the presenter and the presenter’s work be treated with respect by attendees and that all attendees treat each other with respect and a generosity of spirit.
• That attendees will refrain from harassment of any sort including (but not limited to) comments or questions of a racist, homophobic, sexist/sexual, or threatening nature. This includes actions that disrupt or interfere with anyone’s ability to participate. Offenders will be asked to leave the live event and will not be refunded.