Perspective in Literary Fiction
This five-week workshop will offer a deep dive into the use of perspective in fiction. Storytellers operate in first-person, second-person, third-person limited, third-person omniscient, and more unusual points-of-view. What distinguishes these perspectives? What are their gifts and limitations? Most importantly, what can your chosen perspective do for the story you want to tell?
Each class will open with a discussion of perspective in some published fiction. How close is the narrator to the characters? How does the perspective affect the voice in which the story is told? What is the relationship of the voice to the characters?
Next, we will do two writing exercises. The first will be largely generative, based on the reading. The second will be integrative, guiding participants to apply what we are learning to their own stories or characters.
After discussing the writing exercises, we will devote the last part of each class to discussing participant stories.
On registration, participants will receive a packet of published stories or samples to be discussed in the first class; reading for subsequent weeks will be distributed after our first meeting. Participants are encouraged to bring ½-1 page of fiction to share on the first day, though they may choose instead to share some work generated in class. Subsequently, each participant is encouraged to submit 3-10 pages of fiction to be discussed by the class with a special focus on perspective. Otherwise, discussion will be tailored to participant preferences, with an eye to making discussion as useful to the writer as possible.
Participants should arrive each week having read the assigned stories and their peers’ work (approximately 40 pages). Be prepared to discuss these thoughtfully and with engagement! My goal is to create a space for candid and open-ended discussion.
Participants will finish the workshop with greater fluency and command in perspective, as readers able to discern the subtleties and mechanics of this important aspect of our craft, and as writers able to choose and employ a storytelling perspective with verve and confidence.
Padma Viswanathan’s novels have been published in eight countries and shortlisted for various awards, including the Scotiabank Giller Prize. Her most recent book is Like Every Form of Love: A Memoir of Friendship and True Crime (Random House Canada, 2023). Her short fiction, essays, and short translations can be found in Granta, The Paris Review, BRICK, and elsewhere. Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Arkansas, she has also served as fiction faculty at the Banff Center, the Vermont Studio Center, the Bread Loaf Conferences, and the low-residency MFA of Fairleigh Dickinson University. More at www.padmaviswanathan.com