Lit Fest 2025

Western storytelling traditions decree that a linear structure (along with the three act structure, the hero’s journey, and a rising self-esteem arc) are mandatory features of any satisfying story. This program challenges that assumption by exploring non-linear structures, specifically cyclic and nested structures, using examples from non-Western stories and films.
Writers will come to understand how these non-linear structures allow for thematic stacking, embracing of moral complexity, and a synthesis between form and content to explode the idea that a straight line is the best way to tell every story.

In this class, we'll talk about "close third person" point of view, and how to really embody a character’s innermost psyche and motivations. How can you heighten emotion in your writing through the closest point of view possible? In this class, we'll discuss the particular demands of close third POV by exploring elements such as free indirect discourse, the perception layer, psychic distance, "head-hopping," interiority, and embodied physical action.

Very often, writers get to the two-third or three-quarter mark in a work and bog down, sometimes abandoning it to move on to something shinier. Why does this happen? It's a place at which we move from raising questions for the reader to needing to answer them. This change in mode requires a different set of tools than the beginning of a story, while needing to appear part of a seamless whole. In this workshop, we'll look at how to wrap up loose ends, decide which things we can leave dangling, and what elements make a strong closing sentence.