“Many stories with real urgency and momentum grow out of a simple request; someone says to someone else, ‘There's something I want you to do.’” Charles Baxter, author of the short story collection There’s Something I Want You to Do (Pantheon, 2015), delivers a lecture on dramatic structure and how to create urgency and momentum in stories for the Word Works series at Hugo House.

“Nothing makes me want to hurl a book across the room harder and faster than when the writer gives me a quick little emotional recap to make sure I’m keeping up.” For the Word Works series at Hugo House, Pam Houston, the author most recently of Contents May Have Shifted (Norton, 2012), delivers a lecture on crafting dialogue.