The Muse & The Marketplace 2020

In this interactive session, we will explore and then try our hand at the first person plural narrative voice, a voice as old as the Greek chorus and as fresh as “We the Animals.” Some questions the session will explore include: Why would you would want to represent the collective experience? What can the first-person plural narrator say and do that other perspectives can’t? What kinds of stories is it best suited to rendering?

The first person plural can take many forms and we will look at a number of successful examples to study what and how they are achieving their effects, paying particular attention to the varying degrees of differentiation within the collective experience that different authors provide. Within the different categories we identify, you will then try your hand at writing in the collective voice.