How Do You Create Suspense? I’ll Tell You Later.

In this generative workshop—themed around the art of suspense and momentum—we won’t limit ourselves to any particular prose genre or medium, breaking down passages from literature, studying panels from comics, deconstructing clips from films, so that we might apply these artful, compulsive techniques to our own storytelling.  We will cover a range of subjects — structural designs, set-piece moments, withheld information, backstory, the balance of emotional and physical beats, and more — and any lecturing will be rounded out by fun, intensive discussions and brainstorming exercises. Students can come to class with a project in mind (whether short story, novel, screenplay, comics or tv series, memoir) or with an eagerness to start something fresh. Either way, they’ll leave with a literary arsenal and several electric ideas at the ready.

Photo: Eric Mueller

Benjamin Percy is the author of seven novels — most recently The Sky Vault (William Morrow, 2023) — as well as three story collections and a book of essays. Since 2017, he has written Wolverine for Marvel Comics, where he also works on titles like Ghost Rider, X-Force, and Red Hulk. He co-wrote the film Summering with director James Ponsoldt, and it premiered at the Sundance Film Festival.  His fiction and nonfiction have been published in GQ, Esquire, Time, Outside, Men’s Journal, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, Ploughshares, and the Paris Review. His honors include an NEA fellowship, a McKnight fellowship, the Whiting Award, the Plimpton Prize, the iHeart Radio Award for best scripted podcast, two Pushcart Prizes, and inclusion in Best American Short Stories.