4-Week: Light Years—Exploring Time in Fiction

James Salter summed up his 1975 novel Light Years very simply: “I suppose that the plot of the book is the passage of time and what it does to people and things.” In this four-week class, we’ll discuss the crucial but sometimes invisible role of time in fiction-making. Some stories are told chronologically. Some start at the end and move backward. Still others move in ways that defy easy description. Why? By playing with time, we can unlock tremendous potential to surprise, delight, and move our readers. We’ll examine short stories by authors like Anton Chekhov, Michael Cunningham, Edwidge Danticat, Denis Johnson, Alice Munro, David Foster Wallace, and others as we discuss concepts like narrative structure, scene versus summary, point of view, and point of telling. Through in-class writing exercises, we’ll learn to apply these lessons to our own work.