Muse & the Marketplace 2018

What makes certain fiction so gripping? What gives it the power to keep a reader up at night, and to put a book down reluctantly, like parting with a beloved friend? In this session, using brief passages from great novels and stories as models, we'll go beyond basic understandings of dramatic conflict to look into some of the additional ingredients that go into gripping fiction, such as micro-tension, shadow description, and the secrets to creating a riveting point of view character. We'll make distinctions between mystery, suspense, and dramatic irony, and discuss how these informational scenarios interact with point of view to keep the pages turning. A combination of discussion and brief, dynamic writing exercises will give fiction writers a better grasp on the tools they need to make their stories harder to put down—and more likely to be published and widely read.