The Moment of Your Story: Time in Fiction

Catalog description

Literature is bound up with time and time with storytelling. In this workshop, we will ask: What path through time should my story take; what does this mean for my characters and the worlds I am making; and, on a technical level, how the heck do I get there? Starting with Joan Silber’s The Art of Time in Fiction, we will experiment with what Silber calls “classic,” “slow,” and “long” times. We will also consider flash fiction and compression, causality, chronology, and circularity. In the latter part of the semester, we will write outside of time’s boundaries—into dream and memory, lands of the dead, time travel, other worlds, and nonhuman perspectives. Short readings, provided as a packet at the beginning of the course, will THE CURRICULUM 190 include stories and excerpts from Nicholson Baker, Jorge Luis Borges, Octavia Butler, Ted Chiang, Annie Ernaux, Kelly Link, Carmen Maria Machado, Juan Rulfo, George Saunders, Leslie Marmon Silko, and Leo Tolstoy. Outside of class, students will write each week in a different time style. Wild swings, subversions, and “messy” experimentation are most welcome. This class will be generous and flexible, with plenty of room for students to follow what most interests them in their own writing. Students will expand one (or more!) pieces of work in the second half of the semester. The Art of the Short Story