One of the most important elements of fiction is a compelling structure or architecture. The most common and obvious shape is an arc or wave moving from equilibrium to disequilibrium and back to equilibrium again. But this is a little tired, and besides has baked into it the idea of a return to stasis.
Different or unusual narrative shapes can bring about transformation, can be forms of resistance.
What might a story patterned on a nautilus shell or the constellations of the night sky look like? What transformations might it bring about?
In this workshop, we’ll play with form and look at radical structures for storytelling. We’ll also explore how this is not just a macro strategy, but how disruptions at the level of the sentence can resist the old staid (and sometimes oppressive) logics of language.