Fiction Craft Essays

Amber Wheeler Bacon analyzes how David Gates masterfully uses flashbacks and nonlinear structure in his novella “Banishment”, despite advising his writing students against using them. The piece explores how Gates' apparent contradiction, cutting flashbacks in student work but using them extensively in his own, reveals a deeper sophistication in his storytelling. Wheeler Bacon argues that Gates makes flashbacks work by using them as fluid, character-driven insights that reflect the narrator’s emotional journey.

Alix Ohlin explores how time functions as both subject and structure in narrative fiction, using Christian Marclay’s video artwork “The Clock” as a conceptual lens. “The Clock”—a 24-hour montage of film scenes featuring clocks, synced to real time—becomes a metaphor for how fiction can make us feel the passage of time while manipulating it to deepen meaning and emotion. Just as “The Clock” invites viewers to reflect on mortality and presence, fiction uses time to shape how we experience characters, meaning, and story. Whether moving backward, looping through memory, or layering past and present, time in fiction is not just a backdrop, it’s the mechanism that makes the story tick.