Every narrative world creates its own time-space continuum, each reading a shifting experience of place, space, boundaries, proximities and distances, as well as temporal relationships. Spatial relationships convey power among characters, between character and place, text and reader. Imagine characters on your fictional stage: what is immediately visible through body language and placement, home ground or dislocation? Or in the use of narrative and psychic distance: how close or far is interior life? To use film metaphors: what are the effects of long and medium shots and close ups, and how might prose most effectively shift among them? What is intimacy? When is emotional distance an asset? How do different kinds of spaces—rooms, houses, open fields, city streets, sky—shape reader experience? What creates the pressures of claustrophobia or the relief of breathing room, the risks of exposure? How do shifts in scale or boundary crossings open perception or alter reality? What might happen when story space opens within larger story spaces—i.e. a character’s imaginings, a story within a story? And what about the page itself: how does formatting, white space, the density of text shape the psychic/emotional impact of a piece?      

In this class, we’ll consider several of these questions and look at ways a sampling of published works evoke and shape space, orient and re-orient reader perception, from the meanings of place to dramatized physicality, telescoping lenses, deft prepositions, and implicit space for readers. The class will include short prompts, practical tips, and reading suggestions. It will likely be most useful for writers beyond beginning level; all are welcome.

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• In-Class Writing Lift: Light

• Homework: None

• Workshopping Drafts: None

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