2012 Workshop Description
SHORT FICTION
Instructor: Steve Almond
HOW TO MAKE YOUR SHORT STORY SING
(AND WHY IT SHOULD)
(AND WHY IT SHOULD)
Short stories are meant to force characters into danger -- emotional, psychological, even physical. The key to a great story is a writer who knows how to slow down when a character is overrun by feeling. This leads to a compression of sensual and psychological details that lifts the language into the lyric register -- the place where stories sing. In this intensive workshop, we'll look at the work of Tobias Wolff, Joyce Carol Oates, Frank O'Connor and others in an effort to figure out how they manage to sing on the page. And we'll do the same with the manuscripts we critique, probing them for the moments when the characters are in peril, and making sure our narrator (and author) slow down in precisely these spots. No musical instruments necessary. Just bring your voice.
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