WEBINAR | Time Traveler: How to Manipulate Time on the Page

Name: WEBINAR | Time Traveler: How to Manipulate Time on the Page
Start: 2026-11-11T15:00:00-05:00
End: 2026-11-11T16:00:00-05:00
Location: Zoom

November 11 @ 3:00 pm – 4:00 pm America/NewYork

Beyond the chronology of a story, we can speed up and slow down time within scenes, immersing the reader more fully in the moment. Explore four kinds of time in this write-along webinar.

For creative nonfiction, nonfiction, and fiction
Included in the Season Pass

Time on the page creates tension, amplifies emotion, and controls the pace of the story. This can be the time it takes characters or the narrator to move across a room, a montage of the past or flashbacks within the present scene, and the time created by different verb tenses and points of view.

Writers most often work with four types of time:

Linear/logical time that sustains plot and point of view
The Continuous Present, which brings immediacy to the page and can support multiple or collective points of view
Long Time, with which we can depict extraordinary amounts of time passing in a flash piece and show how the deep past informs the present and the future
Meticulous Time, when the time within the story is actually shorter than the amount of time it takes to read it. By slowing time and examining smaller details and moments, greater emotion is created on the page or the reader’s focus is controlled.

With examples and instructions, explore the fascinating craft of creating, expanding, and contracting time by rewriting a single scene in each of the four times. You’ll finish our action-packed hour with a deeper understanding of how time elapses within scenes and flash pieces and a stronger understanding of when and why to use each type of time.

This webinar will also help you find a well of creativity and freedom to draw from in connection to how you replicate time on the page.

Come ready to write!

In this webinar, you will:

LEARN about four different types of time to use in creative writing
HEAR examples that illuminate the advantages of using different time elements
EXPLORE how time is its own craft element, helping writers guide their readers through plot
WRITE in four kinds of time to truly understand this craft technique
KNOW how, when, and why to expand and contract time in your work

This webinar is ideal for …

intermediate and advanced fiction and nonfiction writers who are obsessed with time—how it moves, bends, and plays tricks on the page
writers looking to explore fresh aspects of craft and push past familiar techniques
writers whose scenes feel flat or rushed and want to learn how to stretch a moment until it earns its weight
writers struggling with pacing—either everything moves too fast, or nothing moves at all
writers who want their prose to mirror the way memory, boredom, or deep focus actually feel, instead of defaulting to straightforward chronology
writers ready to experiment with structure and are looking for a framework to do it with intention, not just instinct

Closed captioning is available. ✔
All registrants receive the recording. ✔

ABOUT YOUR PRESENTER

An informal-but-informed teacher focused on actionable results, Sherrie Flick is the author of six books, including the short story collection I Have Not Considered Consequences (Autumn House Press, 2025). She is co-editor for the Norton anthology Flash Fiction America and senior editor at SmokeLong Quarterly. Her work has been performed at Symphony Space for NPR’s Selected Shorts and has appeared in many journals and anthologies, including Ploughshares, New England Review, Prairie Schooner, and Flash Fiction Forward. An essay from her debut essay collection, Homing: Instincts of a Rustbelt Feminist (University of Nebraska Press), was listed as notable in The Best American Essays 2023. Her most recent awards include a Creative Development Grant from the Heinz Endowments and a Writing Pittsburgh fellowship from the Creative Nonfiction Foundation. She is a visiting professor in the West Virginia Wesleyan low-residency MFA program.

REFUNDS (less a $10 processing fee) ARE AVAILABLE before the replay is sent out. For a refund, EMAIL us at info@WritingCraft.com. Canceling your Zoom invite will not initiate this process.