Down the Rabbit Hole of Your Own Life: A Creative Writing Lab with LAURIE STONE

In this one-session workshop/lab, writers will create a piece of creative writing prompted by a recent experience that may not at first seem dramatic. Writers will work to create a narrative voice that speaks directly to the reader. This voice layers time frames (I felt then, I feel now), and makes something ordinary seem strange or something strange seem ordinary. We will consider alternatives to conventional plots. How does a text build suspense and dramatic tension without moving toward the resolution of conflict? The writers WG Sebald, Chris Kraus, Adrienne Kennedy, David Shields, Sarah Manguso, John Haskell, Édouard Levé, and Richard Rodriguez come to mind as practitioners. We will discuss craft and form elements borrowed from music, visual art, and film: fugue structures, bricollage, collage, jump cuts, fades, montage, close-ups, long shots, and exploded moments. We will work with lists and blocks of text.