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The Ingredients for George's Marvelous Medicine 

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The Ingredients for George's Marvelous Medicine 

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The ingredients for George's marvellous medicine

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Infinite Ways in Masterclass Exercises 16th December

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Poem pack - no need to read in advance (unless you would like to)

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Poem pack - no need to read in advance (unless you would like to)

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Here are the poems Caroline will be using in the session. You don't need to read them in advance unless you want to.

To download the file, click on the three dots in the top right hand corner and select Download Attachment.

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Caroline Bird's Arvon Masterclass 16th December 2025

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Dip in to Arvon's Masterclasses on Demand library

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Dip in to Arvon's Masterclasses on Demand library

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Come and join our pay-what-you-can monthly Saturday Writing Club

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Come and join our pay-what-you-can monthly Saturday Writing Club

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Writing doesn’t have to be a solitary pursuit. Once a month, join a welcoming community of writers for a focused hour of creativity with a special guest writer.

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From the acclaimed, prize-winning author of Multitudes, Intimacies and Openings - eight vital stories of memory and connection.

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Chris Power- 
A brief survey of the short story

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Chris Power- 
A brief survey of the short story

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A brief survey of the short story | Books | The Guardian

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Chris Power looks at masters of the short story through the ages

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Sarah Hall, Mrs Fox (Faber & Faber, 2014)

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Sarah Hall, Mrs Fox (Faber & Faber, 2014)

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Available to buy here:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mrs-Fox-Stories-Sarah-Hall/dp/0571351964/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0

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To download the files, click on the three dots in the top right hand corner and select Download Attachment.

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To download the files, click on the three dots in the top right hand corner and select Download Attachment.

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Amy Bonnaffons, “Horse”, The Wrong Heaven (2018)

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Amy Bonnaffons, “Horse”, The Wrong Heaven (2018)

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Available to read online here: https://ciervoblanco.club/horse-by-amy-bonnafons/

Available to listen to (in an abridged version) here:

https://www.thisamericanlife.org/631/so-a-monkey-and-a-horse-walk-into-a-bar/act-two-1

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‘Horse’ by Amy Bonnaffons - Ciervo Blanco

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Every morning we meet in the kitchen and unsheathe our needles. Serena delicately peels down her underwear, exposing a modest triangle of buttock; I count to three, hold her hip to steady her trembling frame, then jab, thrusting the handle until the fluid disappears. She exhales, in one quick hiss, like a cat. Then I turn and bend over, underwear…

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Yukiko Motoya, “The Lonesome Bodybuilder”, The Lonesome Bodybuilder, trans. Asa Yoneda (Soft Skull, 2018)

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Yukiko Motoya, “The Lonesome Bodybuilder”, The Lonesome Bodybuilder, trans. Asa Yoneda (Soft Skull, 2018)

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Daisy Johnson, “Starver”, Fen (Jonathan Cape, 2016) 

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Daisy Johnson, “Starver”, Fen (Jonathan Cape, 2016) 

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Lucy Caldwell, “All the People Were Mean and Bad”, Intimacies, (Faber, 2021)

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Lucy Caldwell, “All the People Were Mean and Bad”, Intimacies, (Faber, 2021)

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Also available to listen to (in an abridged version) here:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000zsf7

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A selected bibliography for The Moving Rock - Allen & Hallett

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Saturday Writing Club

We all know that writing can be a solitary experience. Join fellow writers once a month to write together, share tips and recommendations and set intentions for the month ahead.

The Saturday Writing Club is an inclusive, fun and encouraging community of writers. We welcome everyone, regardless of experience, the genre you’re writing in, or your writing goals.

https://www.arvon.org/writing-courses/courses-retreats/?type%5B%5D=saturday-writing-club&from=&from=&to=&to=&location_type=

Arvon’s newsletter is the best way to avoid missing out on anything we do. We’ll tell you what’s coming up in the week, bring upcoming courses and giveaways on to your radar and share writing opportunities from the literary world.

https://www.arvon.org/mailing-list

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The Saturday Writing Club (July)

A space to write, a place to belong

The Saturday Writing Club (August)

The Saturday Writing Club is on a summer break in August

Residential Writing Course: Writing with Coaching

Refresh your approach, energise your writing

Writers' Retreat at Lumb Bank

Time and space to write

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Creative Writing Courses - Course Search - Arvon

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Our residential courses span poetry to playwriting, song to screenplay, fact to fiction, starting to finishing. Each week consists of workshops, one-to-one tutorials and evening readings.

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Masterclass: Screenwriting

How to write an eye-catching pilot for TV

with Chandni Lakhani

https://www.arvon.org/writing-courses/courses-retreats/masterclass-screenwriting-5/

Upcoming masterclasses

https://www.arvon.org/writing-courses/masterclasses/

Recordings of past masterclasses

https://www.arvon.org/writing-courses/recorded-masterclasses/

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Online Creative Writing Masterclass: Arvon

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Two hours of inspiring tuition from the finest writers at work today. Bring your words to life with Arvon’s creative writing Masterclasses.

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Mythos Manchester is the new visionary film event of the North, connecting creators and investors to shape the future of film and TV.

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Slides for the session - no need to read in advance unless you would like to

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Slides for the session - no need to read in advance unless you would like to

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To download the file, click on the three dots in the top right hand corner and select Download Attachment.

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ARVON masterclass Writing for Children - ANNA WILSON .pptx

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You do not have to read these poems before the Masterclass but you can if you want. They are the poems Kim will be using as examples in the session.

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To download the files, click on the three dots in the top right hand corner and select Download Attachment.

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To download the files, click on the three dots in the top right hand corner and select Download Attachment.

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Korea by John McGahern - please read in advance if you can

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Korea by John McGahern - please read in advance if you can

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If you can, please read this in advance of the masterclass, but don't worry if you don't have time

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Korea by John McGahern full PDF from the Atlantic

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Arvon Masterclass: Fiction – Making the Change

Tutor: Claire Adam

Date: Tuesday 18th November, 2025

Time: 7-9PM GMT

In tomorrow's masterclass, we're going to be discussing how to portray change in our fiction.

We'll discuss two texts (one novel, and one short story) as examples:

Novel: The Remains of the Day, by Kazuo Ishiguro. I've chosen this as it's very well known, so I'm expecting that many of you will be familiar with it.

Short story: Korea, by John McGahern. A PDF of this story is being sent to you before the class. It should take you no more than 20 minutes to read.

If you haven't read one or both of the above texts, please don't worry! You will still be able to understand the content of the class and do the exercises.

I'm looking forward to our session tomorrow.

Claire Adam

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Arvon Masterclass - Claire Adam - Making the Change - note for students

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Arvon Masterclass November 2025 AJ Pearce How to bring your characters to life

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Simply Scripts

https://www.simplyscripts.com

Writers' and Artists' Yearbook

https://www.writersandartists.co.uk

WGGB (Writers' Union)

https://writersguild.org.uk

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A recording of the day will be available to view for a month the day after the live event.

You will receive an email with a link to the recording the day after the course takes place.

You can also access it in your Arvon account by logging in on our website, finding the course under My Bookings and clicking on More Details.

The recording will have auto-captions running, and chat and transcript will be visible alongside.

The link to the course materials will also be available in your Arvon account.

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All sessions of the day are delivered live via Zoom meeting, with the option of cameras off or on.

You can communicate on audio when invited by the tutor.

You can also communicate via the chatbox with your tutor and other writers attending the session.

Auto-captions and transcript will be available to view.

We aim to present all resources in two formats, e.g., extracts of texts will be read aloud and provided in text form via screen-share or as a document.

There will be scheduled breaks, and you are welcome to take breaks when you need to, and to leave and re-join the sessions as you wish.

There will be a Q&A with the tutor at the end, and you will be able to ask questions on audio or by typing them into the Q&A box.

All sessions will be recorded and you will receive a link to the recording the day after the event.

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10-11.30 Morning workshop part one

11.30-11.45 Tea break

11.45-12.45  Morning workshop part two

12.45-13.45 Lunch

13.45-15.15 Afternoon workshop

15.15-15.30 Tea break

15.30-16.00 Final Q&A/next steps

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To download the files, click on the three dots in the top right hand corner and select Download Attachment.

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To download the files, click on the three dots in the top right hand corner and select Download Attachment.

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Where the Character Lives - same content as Word doc

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Where the Character Lives - same content as Word doc

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Arvon Writing Grief Workshop October 2025 Hand Out

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To download the file, click on the three dots in the top right hand corner and select Download Attachment.

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KBarokka Arvon Masterclass Writing Fear October31.2025

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GOTHIC FICTION WITH CJ COOKE - Arvon worksheet

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plays I suggest they read

anything by Alice Birch

anything by Winsome Pinnock

Anything by Alistair McDowell

Ministry of Lesbian Affairs - IMAN QURESHI

Silent by Pat Kinnevane

My play Museum in Baghdad !

Blasted Sarah Kane (with trigger warnings of rape/war)

plays I am seeing in the coming months

Bengal Tiger at Young Vic

Lifers at Southwark playhouse

Apparently Measure for Measure at RSC is interesting

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WRITING EXERCISE ONE (5 mins): to get us writing, quick exercise so we can practice using these different modes of memory:

1) Factual: Write three quick, factual sentences about how you slept last night.

2) Experiential: Now write three sentences that describe the experience of your sleep last night – how it felt physically – using the present tense.

3) Reflective: Now write three sentences that describe how you feel about the sleep you did or did not get last night.

WRITING EXERCISE TWO (in two parts, 7 mins each):

1) Describe an experience (a story) from your life that you have told often, maybe because it’s especially funny or sad or silly.

2) Write about how you feel about that story now. Think about how you have told it, when you have told it, why you have told it. What have you been trying to tell others about yourself when you have told it? How true is the version you have been telling all these years?

WRITING EXERCISE THREE (7 mins):

Return to the story you have always told about yourself from the previous exercise, and write a scene from it. Use one of your senses as your way in to the scene, so it could be a taste, a sound, a physical sensation, or something you’re observing.

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Memory is a pinball in a machine—it messily ricochets around between image, idea, fragments of scenes, stories you’ve heard. Then the machine goes tilt and snaps off. But most of the time, we keep memories packed away. I sometimes liken that moment of sudden unpacking to circus clowns pouring out of a miniature car trunk—how did so much fit into such a small space?

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My holy of holies is the human body, health, intelligence, talent, inspiration, love, and absolute freedom – freedom from violence and falsehood, no matter how the last two manifest themselves

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My mother has been a practicing clinical psychotherapist for almost thirty years. Once, I asked her if she ever gets sleepy during sessions. “Rarely,” she said, and explained that, for the most part, she finds listening to her patients inexhaustibly compelling. Over the years, she has come to understand that the only time she gets drowsy is when her patient isn’t telling the whole truth, mostly to themselves, or when they are not fully awake in their telling. If they are performing a persona or telling her the story they have told themselves and not reaching for the greater truth of an experience, she begins pinching herself. I related, not as a listener of people’s stories but as a reader of them.

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I often tell my students about the importance of authorial distance. The I of their narrator is not the I that writes the book. It is not the complex and fluctuating matrix that makes up their self or their personality or their identity. It is a personification of a single strand of these, the one that occupies their story of the past, which is also a single strand plucked from a larger matrix.

Successful narration of a memoir depends upon the careful interplay of the past I and the present – whether it be explicit or implicit in the text. Self-knowledge, the insights unavailable in the past and acquired in the time since, are what give memoir its depth. It is not experience that qualifies a person to write a memoir, but insight into experience, and the ability to tell a story of the past that contains both dimensions. That is, the past experience has been integrated into the larger narrative of the author’s life. For me, and I believe for most memoirists, the process of writing is also a process of comprehension, an examination of the past that yields new understanding.

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Carmen Maria Machado, 'In The Dream House' 

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Carmen Maria Machado, 'In The Dream House' 

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The memoir is, at its core, an act of resurrection. Memoirists re-create the past, reconstruct dialogue. They summon meaning from events that have long been dormant. They braid the clays of memory and essay and fact and perception together, smash them into a ball, roll them flat. They manipulate time; resuscitate the dead. They put themselves, and others, into necessary context.

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Not all of these will be covered in the session. The rest are for you to take away and analyse using the tools & techniques covered

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Apologies that the link is Amazon- please try to order through your local bookshop :)

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20 Master Plots: And How to Build Them: Amazon.co.uk: Tobias, Ronald B. B.: 8601200659917: Books

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Buy 20 Master Plots: And How to Build Them 3 by Tobias, Ronald B. B. (ISBN: 8601200659917) from Amazon’s Book Store. Everyday low prices and free delivery on eligible orders.

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A recording of the masterclass will be available to view without a time limit the day after the live event.

You will receive an email with a link to the recording the day after the masterclass takes place.

You can also access it in your Arvon account by logging in on our website, finding the course under My Bookings and clicking on More Details.

The recording will have auto-captions running, and chat and transcript will be visible alongside.

The link to the course materials will also be available in your Arvon account.

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The Masterclass will be delivered via Zoom webinar. You audio and video will be off throughout the event, and you will not be visible to other participants.

You can communicate via the chatbox with your tutor and other writers attending the session.

Auto-captions and transcript will be available to view.

We aim to present all resources in two formats, e.g., extracts of texts will be read aloud and provided in text form via screen-share or as a document.

There will be a scheduled break in the middle, and you are welcome to take breaks when you need to, and to leave and re-join the session as you wish.

There will be a Q&A with the tutor at the end, and you will be able to ask questions by typing them into the Q&A box.

The session will be recorded and you will receive a link to the recording the day after the event (please see below for detailed information on the recording).

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Please find here the poems that Tim will be using during his masterclass. You don't need to read them in advance unless you would like to.

You are also invited to bring poems that you are working on to use as material to work on with the exercises.

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To download the file, click on the three dots in the top right hand corner and select Download Attachment.

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Arvon’s newsletter is the best way to avoid missing out on anything. We’ll tell you what’s coming up in the week, bring upcoming courses and giveaways on to your radar and share writing opportunities from the literary world.

https://www.arvon.org/mailing-list

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A recording of the day will be available to view for a month the day after the live event.

You will receive an email with a link to the recording the day after the course takes place.

You can also access it in your Arvon account by logging in on our website, finding the course under My Bookings and clicking on More Details.

The recording will have auto-captions running, and chat and transcript will be visible alongside.

The link to the course materials will also be available in your Arvon account.

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Saturday Writing Club and keeping in touch

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Saturday Writing Club and keeping in touch

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If you want to keep your writing momentum going, consider joining the next session of our free Saturday Writing Club to meet with other writers to reflect on the past month's writing, set some realistic goals and get into the writing mood with a couple exercises from a Special Guest. If you miss it, you can find out when the next one is on the Arvon website

Furthermore if you want to keep in touch with your fellow writers from your Online Writing Day, please feel free to share any contact information below and create your own Writing Group.

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Please ignore an email that was sent in error announcing a change of tutor. Due to a technical glitch an incorrect email went out. Rest assured Gwyneth's Online Writing Day is going ahead as advertised tomorrow. I would also like to clarify that there is no need to read anything ahead of tomorrow unless you would like to. We just send ahead of time so that if people would like to print/prepare they can do so.

Huge apologies for the confusion,

The Arvon at Home Team

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Course materials (no need to read ahead of the day unless you would like to)

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Course materials (no need to read ahead of the day unless you would like to)

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Writing your Personal Story in Poetry and Prose

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We are sharing the materials that Peter will be referring to during his masterclass for anyone who needs them in advance. There is no need to read this before the event, but you are welcome to do so if you would like.

To download the file, click on the three dots in the top right hand corner and select Download Attachment.

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Here you can find a copy of both case studies.

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To download the file, click on the three dots in the top right hand corner and select Download Attachment

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https://www.writersandartists.co.uk/advice/how-write-non-fiction-proposal-and-get-agent

https://www.writersandartists.co.uk/advice/how-to-submit-a-non-fiction-proposal

https://societyofauthors.org/2020/03/09/before-you-sign-literary-agents

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Consider joining the next session of our free Saturday Writing Club to meet with other writers to reflect on the past month's writing, set some realistic goals and get into the writing mood with a couple of exercise from a Special Guest. If you haven't had the time or have missed it, you can find out when the next one is on the Arvon Website.

And here you can view more information about our upcoming Narrative Non-Fiction Masterclass as well as our Non-Fiction Online Writing Week.

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To download the file, click on the three dots in the top right hand corner and select Download Attachment

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Saturday Writing Club and keeping in touch

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Saturday Writing Club and keeping in touch

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If you want to keep your writing momentum going, consider joining the next session of our free Saturday Writing Club to meet with other writers to reflect on the past month's writing, set some realistic goals and get into the writing mood with a couple exercises from a Special Guest. If you haven't the time or you have missed it, you can find out when the next one is on the Arvon website

Furthermore if you want to keep in touch with your fellow writers from your Online Writing Day, please feel free to share any contact information below to create your own Writing Group! Thank you.

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A recording of the day will be available to view for a month the day after the live event.

You will receive an email with a link to the recording the day after the course takes place.

You can also access it in your Arvon account by logging in on our website, finding the course under My Bookings and clicking on More Details.

The recording will have auto-captions running, and chat and transcript will be visible alongside.

The link to the course materials will also be available in your Arvon account.

# data[].attributes.body
All sessions of the day are delivered live via Zoom meetings, with the option of cameras off or on.

You can communicate on audio when invited by the tutor.

You can also communicate via the chatbox with your tutor and other writers attending the session.

Auto-captions and transcript will be available to view.

We aim to present all resources in two formats, e.g., extracts of texts will be read aloud and provided in text form via screen-share or as a document.

There will be scheduled breaks, and you are welcome to take breaks when you need to, and to leave and re-join the sessions as you wish.

There will be a Q&A with the tutor at the end, and you will be able to ask questions on audio or by typing them into the Q&A box.

All sessions will be recorded and you will receive a link to the recording the day after the event.

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10-11.30 Morning workshop part one

11.30-11.45 Tea break

11.45-12.45  Morning workshop part two

12.45-13.45 Lunch

13.45-15.15 Afternoon workshop

15.15-15.30 Tea break

15.30-16.00 Final Q&A/next steps

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If possible, please come ready for the day with a printout of a work-in-progress, or a favourite nonfiction essay by another writer if you don’t yet have a work-in-progress to hand. Please also bring sheets of paper (or a long roll of paper), coloured pens/pencils, post-it notes, and scissors.

We know not everyone has access to a printer so don’t worry too much, but having some coloured pens and paper to hand will be useful.

As an alternative, you will also be able to do the activity digitally.

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Please find here the powerpoint Jessica will be using throughout the session, and an excerpt by Rob Mcfarlane that she will cover during the day. There is no need to read through these in advance but please do so if it will help you to better access the day.

Jessica has also suggested an article for optional advanced reading.

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Optional advanced reading (link to Paris Review article)

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Optional advanced reading (link to Paris Review article)

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In 1926, an Irish designer named Eileen Gray built a shiplike villa on the south coast of France that drove the famed architect Le Corbusier wild. Corbu had declared that a house was "a machine to live in," but Gray thought, No: a house is a person's shell, a skin, and should respond to how she lives. To start designing, she studied how she and her housekeeper moved through the day and made diagrams of their motions and those of the sun to reveal natural patterns-loops in the kitchen, deep lines by the windows, meanders through the living room. The house she then built on rocks by the sea expressed this organic choreography. A mouthlike entry pulled you in; screens and mirrors unfolded from walls; windows and shutters opened in all directions for the right air, light, or view. On plans she drew lines showing how you could move, look, and live in this house: natural pathways transformed to design.

I love how Gray made this house, and really love how much it maddened bombastic Corbu. Gray's way of working from life to art could also describe writing: writers go about their observing, imagining lives, moving onward day by day but always alert to patterns-ways in which experiences shape themselves, ways we can replicate these shapes with words. We then create passages for a reader to move through, seeing and sensing what we devise on the way. And when a reader's done-levitation! She looks down and sees how she's traveled, the pattern of the whole.

I'm saying see because we often think of narrative as a temporal art, experienced in time like music, but it's visual, too; a story's as much garden as song. Northrop Frye puts it this way: "We hear or listen to a narrative, but when we grasp a writer's total pattern we 'see' what he means." John Berger atomizes further: "Seeing comes before words." We first apprehend text as texture-blurry or dense, black on white-and perceive each word as a picture (the part of our brain that recognizes words has a twin that recognizes faces). Then we pass through the words' looks and into their meanings, absorbing a stream of visual images conjured by the language. Next we might develop another layer of "vision," sensing elements that give the story structure: a late scene mirrors an earlier one, or a subtle use of color tints the whole. And as we read, we travel not just through places portrayed in the story but through the narrative itself. It might feel like gliding in a bayou, pacing a labyrinth, hopping from block to block: neuroscientists have recorded the inner sensations of reading as "a felt motionless movement through space." Once you've finished reading, that motionless movement leaves in your mind a numinous shape of the path you traveled.

Goethe calls the path through a text a "red thread." Henry James speaks of this numinous path or form as the "figure in the carpet." I like best how Ronald Sukenick puts it: "Form is your footprints in the sand when you look back."

Curiously, for centuries there's been a single path through fiction we're most likely to travel-indeed, one that aspiring writers are told to follow: the dramatic arc. A situation arises, grows tense, reaches a peak, subsides. If you ask Google how to structure a story, your face will be hammered with pictures of arcs, triangles, pyramids. The arc is an elegant shape, especially when translated to its natural form, a wave. Its rise and fall traces a motion we sense in heartbeats, breaking surf, the sun, and there's real power in a wave's movement from beginning to midpoint to end. But something that swells and tautens until climax, then collapses: a little masculo-sexual, no? Why is this the form we should expect our stories to take?

We inherited the arc from drama. Twenty-five hundred years ago, Aristotle dissected tragedies such as Sophocles's Oedipus the King to find their common features, as he might dissect snakes to see if their spines were alike. He found that powerful dramas shared certain elements, including a particular path. Here's (some of) what he wrote in Poetics: "A tragedy is an imitation of an action that is complete in itself [with a] beginning, middle, and end ... Every tragedy is in part Complication and in part Dénouement; the incidents before the opening scene, and often certain also of those within the play, forming the Complication; and the rest the Denouement. By Complication I mean all from the beginning of the story to the point just before the change in the hero's fortunes; by Denouement, all from the beginning of the change to the end."

Beginning, middle, and end; complication, change, denouement. Two thousand years later, in The Technique of the Drama, Gustav Freytag examined Greek and Shakespearean tragedies and drew a graphic like the pattern Aristotle described, showing the parts of drama: introduction, rise, climax, fall, and catastrophe-Freytag's famous triangle or pyramid. John Gardner then helped make the link between tragedy and fiction, recommending to young writers the "energeic" novel: "By his made-up word energeia ... Aristotle meant 'the actualization of the potential that exists in character and situation.' (The fact that Aristotle was talking about Greek tragedy need not delay us. If he'd known about novels, he'd have said much the same.) Logically, the energeic novel falls into three parts, Aristotle's 'beginning, middle, and end,' which ... fall into the pattern exposition, development, and denouement ... "

But shouldn't the fact that Aristotle was talking about tragedy, not novels, delay us? Novels didn't exist for him, but if they did, he'd have analyzed specimens to see their structures. The arc is a perfect expression for the movement of tragedy and has created masses of elegant novels, too. But given that the kinds of stories in fiction aren't as tonally set as in ancient tragedy, why insist that a single shape form them?

Then there's the arc's irksome sexual aspect. Here's critic Robert Scholes: "The archetype of all fiction is the sexual act ... the fundamental orgastic rhythm of tumescence and detumescence, of tension and resolution, of intensification to the point of climax and consummation."

Well. This is not how I experience sex. Critic Susan Winnett says, "Meanings generated through dynamic relations of beginnings, middles, and ends in traditional narrative and traditional narratology never seem to accrue directly to the account of the woman." And anyway, why should sex-this kind of sex!-be the archetype of fiction? Why should an art form as innovative as fiction have a single archetype at all?

In twenty years of teaching I've seen one smart, edgy young writer after another sleepwalk into the arc. They feel obliged to create "rising conflict" and "climax" and "resolution," no matter how much they're faking it. And so many instructors, handbooks, and helpful sites-our narrative-based culture at large-insist: a story must have an "arc."

Now that Gardner's got me imagining what Aristotle would say of fiction, though, I want to look at one of his core concepts about art forms altogether. I love that he likens specimens of literary art to living creatures, having organic unity-indeed, having souls. "The first essential, the life and soul, so to speak, of Tragedy is the Plot." The term soul here is part of his conceptual framework of "hylomorphism." Hylo or hule = matter, and morphe = form; hylomorphism refers to the compound of matter and form that exists in both artifacts and living beings. Matter has potential that is made actual by form. Imagine a lump of clay that someone wants to shape into a bird. That lump has the potential to look like a bird, but only if, along with clay, there exists the abstract idea, or form, of "bird" (and an artist to shape it). Once the clay has been modeled into a bird, it's a compound of matter and form: a piece of art. The form that it could be has actualized the potential existing in that matter. In a living being, the corollary to matter is body, and the corollary to form is soul. Soul animates body to make a living being, just as form animates matter to make a piece of art. So when Aristotle says that "plot" is the "soul" of tragedy, he means that plot is the idea of a shape that will turn potential into an actualized whole.

Rather than expect the "soul" or animating shape of fiction to be a plotted arc, why not imagine other shapes? The arc makes sense for tragedy, but fiction can be wildly other. Especially now, when, to survive as a species, it had better exploit all it is that's not drama. Sukenick says, "Instead of reproducing the form of previous fiction, the form of the novel should seek to approximate the shape of our experience"; Aristotle saw art forms as organic beings. Wouldn't it make sense for the shape of our experience to be organic? And not necessarily orgasmic.

The causal arc wasn't a given as Western fiction crawled to life, but gradually became a convention, with writers resisting it often. Other cultures evolved fiction differently from the start: as Ming Dong Gu explains, Chinese fiction grew with an emphasis on lyricism, relying on pattern, repetition, and rhythm, and "organized on a structural principle different from the time-based, direction-oriented, and logically coherent principle of the Western narrative."

As Nigel Krauth puts it, "If one needs a short cut to understanding the nature of the Radical in [Western] literature, one might think first about concepts related to the singular, the linear, the beginning-middle-and-end structure, and think how a writer can replace them with multiplicity, collage or a rhizome of fragments." Think of the Modernists' shift from the "omniscient" narrator toward narratorial consciousness that follows the tangles of human sensibility, or the many multistranded novels that arose early last century, the Oulipo with their fabulous strictures and the possibilities these strictures opened, the Nouveau-Romanist and their experiments with objectivism, and so on.

Writers have proposed other shapes or patterns for narrative, too. Italo Calvino says that in Invisible Cities he was thinking of a crystal's shape and "built up a many-faceted structure in which each brief text is close to the others in a series that does not imply logical sequence or a hierarchy, but a network in which one can follow multiple routes and draw multiple, ramified conclusions." Gottfried Benn spoke of an orange-shaped narrative, in which segments radiate from or lean toward a central pith. Ross Chambers coined the (terrible) term loiterature for narratives that can be labyrinthine, digressing extravagantly. And Joseph Frank launched much of this discussion with "The Idea of Spatial Form," where he describes a kind of fiction in which juxtaposition or association replaces temporal order, sense not arising from linearity but from puzzle-like compositions or networks.

I was looking for ways to create forward motion in narrative that didn't rely on the linear arc when I happened upon W. G. Sebald, twenty years ago. In The Emigrants, he seemed to work with patterns that yielded connections and meaning, rather than anything linear. Since then, I've sought powerful narratives with structures other than an arc, structures that create an inner sensation of traveling toward something and leave a sense of shape behind-not just slice-of-life. I dissected some of the most effective, unusual narratives to see what they had in common, and what I found: shapes recurring in these texts coincide with core patterns in nature.

Matter fills space according to a host of natural laws that again and again yield the same patterns. This I learned only recently, when I read Peter Stevens's brilliant 1974 book Patterns in Nature while riding Amtrak. I actually went through a cascade of epiphanies as I read, staring out the window at the world Stevens kept transforming. Philip Ball's newer book with the same name illustrates gorgeously how a cluster of patterns recurs at every scale in our world, atomic to galactic. The wave is one: it's everywhere. There's a reason we're drawn to it, whether watching a drama with swelling and collapsing tensions or gazing as surf breaks on shore: a wave is a clear instance of energy charging static matter until that energy is spent and equilibrium returns, elegant and satisfying. Arcs or waves can create powerful narratives, but it might be more freeing, as writers, if we think not of a story following an arc, but of the reading experience doing so. A tentative entry leads to ever greater involvement until the words stop, and the narrative settles into some kind of sense.

Patterns other than the wave, though, are everywhere. Here are the ones Stevens calls "nature's darlings." Spiral: think of a fiddlehead fern, whirlpool, hurricane, horns twisting from a ram's head, or a chambered nautilus. Meander: picture a river curving and kinking, a snake in motion, a snail's silver trail, or the path left by a goat grazing the tenderest greens. Radial or explosion: a splash of dripping water, petals growing from a daisy's heart, light radiating from the sun, the ring left around a tick bite. Branching and other fractal patterns: self-replication at different scale made by trees, coastlines, clouds. Cellular or network patterns: repeating shapes you see in a honeycomb, foam of bubbles, cracked lakebed, or light rippling in a pool; these can look like cells or, inversely, like a net.

These fundamental patterns inform our bodies, too. We have wiggling meanders in our hair, brains, and intestines; branching patterns in capillaries, neurons, and lungs; explosive patterns in areolae and irises; spirals in ears, fingertips, DNA, fists. Our brains want patterns. We follow them instinctively: coiling a garden hose, stacking boxes, creating a wavering path when walking along the shore. And we even invoke these patterns to describe motions in our minds: someone spirals into despair or compartmentalizes emotions, thoughts meander, rage can be so great we feel we'll explode. There are, in other words, recurring ways that we order and make things. Those natural patterns have inspired visual artists and architects for centuries. Why wouldn't they form our narratives, too?

A meandering narrative might digress, sometimes flowing quickly and sometimes barely at all, often looping back on itself, yet ultimately moving onward: I think of Nicholson Baker's The Mezzanine or Marguerite Duras's The Lover. A spiraling narrative might move around and around with regular, rhythmic repetitions, yet it advances steadily, deepening into the past, perhaps, or rising into the future. Essayists speak of spiraling form in reflective personal pieces; reflective, lyrical novels might be similar: think of Jamaica Kincaid's Mr. Potter. A radial narrative could spring from a central hole-an incident, absence, horror-around which it keeps circling or from which it keeps veering, but it scarcely moves forward in time, like Gabriel García Márquez's Chronicle of a Death Foretold or Joyce Carol Oates's Black Water. A fractal narrative could branch from a core or seed, repeating at different scales the shape or dynamic of that core, possibly branching on indefinitely: I think of Caryl Phillips's Crossing the River. And cellular narratives come in like parts, creating meaning through juxtaposition and links: Sebald's The Emigrants.

Meander, spiral, radial, fractal, cell. Maybe there are even correlations between kinds of stories and certain natural patterns, like tragedians following the arc. A feminist approach to writing? Or just more naturalistic? Or Aristotle's hylomorphism all over again: shape informing life.

Jane Alison is the author of a memoir, The Sisters Antipodes, and four novels-The Love-Artist, The Marriage of the Sea, Natives and Exotics, and Nine Island -and is also the translator of Ovid's stories of sexual transformation, Change Me. She is professor of creative writing at the University of Virginia and lives in Charlottesville.
Copyright © 2019 by Jane Alison, from Meander, Spiral, Explode: Design and Pattern in Narrative. Reprinted by permission of Catapult.

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Beyond the Narrative Arc - The Paris Review

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In 1926, an Irish designer named Eileen Gray built a shiplike villa on the south coast of France that drove the famed architect Le Corbusier wild. Corbu had declared that a house was "a machine to live in," but Gray thought, No: a house is a person's shell, a skin, and should respond to how she lives.

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Jessica J. Lee Arvon 1-Day Structure Nonfiction Workshop

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How to be a Poet

Jo Bell and Jane Commane

https://ninearchespress.com/publications/poetry-collections/how%20to%20be%20a%20poet

Apples and Snakes

https://applesandsnakes.org/

Beyond the Spectrum

https://beyondthespectrum.uk/

Access to Work

https://www.gov.uk/access-to-work

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