3 Sessions: Sundays, April 6, 13, 20
2:00-4:00pm ET
Ayşegül Savaş

Ayşegül Savaş is the author of three critically acclaimed novels, as well as a work of non-fiction,The Wilderness, which will be published in October, 2025. Her short story collection, Long Distance, is forthcoming from Bloomsbury. Her stories appear regularly in the New Yorker and have also been published in The Paris Review, Granta, The Yale Review, among others. She has taught creative writing at the Sorbonne, and lives in Paris.

Are you daunted by the idea of plot? Do you feel stuck once you have set up the landscape and characters of your fictional world? Plot, for some writers, can be the most challenging pat of finishing a short story or novel, but this difficulty may be alleviated by shifting the focus of the narrative drive. In this seminar, we will consider plot as a time structure rather than a series of events we must invent to keep the story going. In each session, we will examine the plot structures of several fictional works and discuss how their internal clocks create a sense of momentum. We will also look at different types of time structures (linear, looping, repeating...) Most importantly, we will discuss how these different forms can organically dictate the content of a fictional work.

Workshop Highlights:

• Gain confidence in your ability to create plot

• Gain familiarity with analyzing a work's structure

• Think about time structures in your own writing.

One full and one partial scholarship available. To apply, please fill out this form by Friday, March 28.