What happens when two characters talk about everything except the thing that matters most? In this generative workshop, we'll explore how silence and subtext can do more work on the page than any direct statement. Through a short writing exercise, you'll practice one of fiction's most powerful tools: the scene in which nothing important is said — and everything is communicated. We'll look at how objects, gestures, and ordinary conversation can carry enormous emotional weight, and how restraint can create more tension than revelation. You'll leave with a fresh piece of writing and a new instinct for where the real story lives. This workshop is for fiction writers of all levels who want to write with more depth, more layering, and more trust in what the reader can feel without being told.
CYN VARGAS is the author of Nothing's Ever The Same, which received a starred review from Booklist, and On The Way, named one of Book Scrolling's Best Short Story Collections of All Time. Her fiction has appeared in Split Lip, Word Riot, the Chicago Reader's Fiction Issue, and other literary magazines, and one of her stories, Myran's Dad, has been performed three times at NPR's Selected Shorts. Of Mayan descent, she is a faculty member at StoryStudio Chicago, has led workshops at Ragdale and Interlochen Center for the Arts, and was voted Stories Matter Foundation's 2022 Instructor of the Year by her students. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Columbia College Chicago.
