Muse & the Marketplace 2018

Writers don't always know it, but we're masters of time. In the real world, we live our lives forward, chronologically, and at the same rate. But writers can control time, move through time, and alter time. In this session-- for both fiction and nonfiction writers-- we'll examine how writing by Cheryl Strayed, Junot Diaz, JRR Tolkien, Barry Lopez and others strategically use time and to what effect. We'll examine the pacing of a narrative (how quickly through time we move), the sequence of story time (whether the is story being told chronologically or not), and how other techniques, such as sentence length and layout, can manipulate our experience of time and increase our engagement in a story. Via guided writing prompts, attendees will try out some of these techniques for themselves.