By Michael Chambers and Charlie Stone

Dr. Thorton’s Fiction Workshop in the Saunders Family Library. Photo credit: Charlie Stone.

Upper School English teacher Dr. Z. Bart Thornton’s Fiction Workshop class has students eagerly awaiting weekly readings, where chapters from the students’ fiction are brought to life and performed in front of the class. Dr. Thornton encourages students to share their work, having peers narrate each other’s stories. Dr. Thornton offers a supportive environment, and he encourages writers to experiment with their voice and style.

After each reading, observing class members give feedback, highlighting both strengths and areas for improvement. Classmates discuss everything from character development to the theme of the stories. Dr. Thornton guides the feedback, teaching students to be thoughtful and specific in their responses. Students come away with a growing understanding of how to assess and improve narration and story writing as a whole, shaping them into more adept writers. 

Students in Fiction Workshop create a original novella through weeks of discussion, class reading aloud, and feedback. Dr. Thornton describes the class as “always doing something interesting.” Writers feature their work in class as peers read the roles of their created characters. Observing the class, we listened to Sarah Turnbull’s (’25) fiction story of two sisters, Charlotte and Silvia, navigating devastation after losing both parents. The novella, set in a boarding school for girls, was brought to life by Turnbull’s classmates and Dr. Thornton. As they switched between tense scenes, Turnbull utilized brutal detail and imagery. Each portrait of the characters grew more detailed as the mood changed and we became familiar with the plot. The story developed as the chapter closed, leaving promising possibilities for future chapters. 

Through Fiction Workshop, Dr. Thornton is building a community of storytellers, bringing characters to life, and finding students’ unique voices, one chapter at a time.