The Vivid and Continuous Dream: A Short Story Workshop

In March, in 1918, an Olympic swimmer accepts a job rehabilitating the Polio-ravaged legs of a rich young woman, not knowing the mess of love and wreckage that await their future selves; in Western Australia, a bullied adolescent watches his high school tormentor drown beneath the surface of an aquifer—he expects reprieve, but all his life he will sense the boy, resinous, in the mist and the warm wet air; in Spokane, a man embarks on a strange, galvanizing quest to reclaim an heirloom headdress that once belonged to his grandmother, and the journey leaves him wondering who he is, or who he used to be, or who he might yet become.

The best stories ask questions but don’t dare give all the answers; they take the reader on a journey and leave them with a brief sliver of enlightenment. Yes: love is worth the cost to body and soul, in 1918 as much as now. No: there is no easy escape from regret, and good people will suffer if they stoop to the level of their abusers. Perhaps what matters is not to complete the task or reclaim our past, but to reassure ourselves that we tried.

This workshop is a guided discussion about the plot, characters, point of view, structure, and language (the mechanics or “craft”) of participants’ short stories, as well as an investigation of each story’s aboutness, patterns, emotional plot, and central question(s)—that is, all those hard-to-define elements that make fiction what it is.

Additionally, the workshop aims to foster community among the attendees, to bring together writers of similar skill and drive, and to encourage the kind of creative energy that crackles between new practitioners.

Some Learning Objectives

• Critical reading, and the ability to identify the roots of a story’s problems, particularly with regard to dramatic structure and conflict. Conversely: the ability to identify the roots of a story’s successes, especially when it seems intangible or difficult to pin down.
• Close reading, even of your own work, for strongest-possible sentences. (They are, after all, the building blocks of fiction.)
• To immerse yourself in, and engage with, literature among a cohort of people who are similarly immersed and engaged in literature; to enjoy it.

In our first meeting, we will establish a schedule, review workshop etiquette, spend some time meeting each other, and do a few writing exercises. From then on, each session will consist of detailed discussion and feedback on participants’ stories. The goal, always, is to offer the writer of each story constructive suggestions to help them improve the story and their craft. We are, I always say, in this together.

In preparation: Please bring a short story of no more than 2500 words to the first session.

D. W. Wilson is the author of Once You Break a Knuckle, a collection of short stories, and Ballistics, a novel. His work has appeared in lit mags across the globe, and in 2011 he won the BBC National Short Story Award for “The Dead Roads.” Since then he has been shortlisted for numerous fiction prizes, and has won the CBC Short Story Prize and the Manchester Fiction Prize. He taught creative writing at the University of Victoria and Brandon University and is currently a fiction mentor for the University of King’s College’s writing MFA.