Writing Workshops

Out of Order: Crafting Nonlinear Narratives with Alanna Schubach

$50

1 Session

Out of stock

Wednesday, 7:00 pm EDT - 9:00 pm EDT September 25, 2024

The Center for Fiction

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Moving directly from point A to point B isn’t always the best way to tell a story. Sometimes we find ourselves starting at the end, hopping back and forth in time, or circling the same events until our understanding of them changes. Nonlinear narratives can make for fascinating and thrilling reading, but writing them poses particular challenges. How do we maintain continuity, clarity, and suspense when our stories don’t follow a straight line? How do we decide which episodes of a timeline we want to visit? How do we make forays into the past illuminate rather than bog down the present? How do we keep the reader oriented in where and when they are in the story?

Looking at works as disparate as Homer’s The Odyssey, Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five, David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas, Muriel Spark’s The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, and more, we will discuss how authors time-hop successfully and why a nonlinear structure serves the stories they tell. We will also dive into how we, as writers, can craft our own “disorderly” narratives. You’ll leave this workshop with craft ideas and writing exercises that will help you find the right “shape” for your plot, keep readers oriented amid narratives that don’t follow a straight line, and build suspense even when readers already know how your story ends.

This course is held in person at The Center for Fiction.

Led by

Alanna Schubach

Alanna Schubach

Alanna Schubach is the author of The Nobodies (Blackstone, 2022). Her short fiction has appeared in the Iowa Review, Shenandoah, the Sewanee Review, the Massachusetts Review, and more. She lives in New York, where she works as a reelance journalist and writing teacher.

About this series

Writing Workshops

We strive to make our classes the most inviting and rewarding available, offering an intimate environment to study with award-winning, world-class writers. Each class is specially designed by the instructor, so whether you’re a fledgling writer or an MFA graduate polishing your novel, you’ll find a perfect fit here.

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