Fiction needs tension. Without it, a story will not hold the reader’s attention for long, regardless of how beautiful or profound the writing may be. This is as true for literary fiction as it is for thrillers.
In this class, we will discuss how to create and use tension in our own writing. We will explore what it means to put a character in danger—great or small, real or imagined, internal or external. We will talk about how to use setting, dialogue, plot architecture, character descriptions, and many other elements of story to heighten the tension in our work.
ABBY GENI is the author of The Wildlands, The Lightkeepers, The Last Animal, and a short story collection, The Body Farm. Her books have been translated into seven languages and have won the Barnes & Noble Discover Award and the Chicago Review of Books Awards, among other honors. Her short stories have won first place in the Glimmer Train Fiction Open and the Chautauqua Contest and have been published or are forthcoming in numerous journals, including The Missouri Review, Epoch, Ninth Letter, and New Stories from the Midwest. Geni is a faculty member at StoryStudio Chicago and frequently serves as Visiting Associate Professor of Fiction at the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop.
