It’s significant that our oldest stories begin with “Once upon a time.” A reader’s experience of characters and their decisions, events and their consequences, “reality” as represented or challenged—all this and more is closely connected to the way an author manages time. In fiction, time can stretch out moment by moment, compress eons into a single sentence, move back and forth between the present and past, flash forward into the future. It can structure a book with linearity or rupture itself in useful ways.

We’ll read Joan Silber’s slim and masterful The Art of Time in Fiction as a guide to our discussion of selected short stories and novel excerpts. In-class writing and take-home exercises will give writers a chance to explore different ways of working with time, and students will have the opportunity to workshop short pieces in the second two weeks of the course.

Less experienced writers may find that thoughtful consideration of the resources of time helps propel them through early drafts.