Diptychs and Triptychs

This semester, I'm teaching a graduate fiction workshop on Linked Stories. I've talked about this topic a lot recently. At the 2011 AWP Conference, and on my blog.


I created #amlinking to document this particular course. My hope is that by making the class a little more transparent, everyone wins:

• the students learn how to present themselves in an online environment as writers
• creative writing teachers learn how they might teach a class on the linked story form
• writers learn how to work in that formal space between "story collection" and "novel."

I've subtitled the class "Diptychs and Triptychs, Rings and Mobius Strips," and on the first day, we're going to look at how painters and photographers arrange images into different shapes and forms, creating narrative sequences and juxtapositions. Consider for example if these pictures were arranged in the opposite order--what different kind of story would be told?