Name: Earned, Not Engineered: On Building Plot
Start: 2027-01-17T09:30:00-0500
End: 2027-01-17T10:30:00-0500

Earned, Not Engineered: On Building Plot

Sunday January 17, 2027 9:30am - 10:30am EST

TBA

How do you create a gripping plot that nonetheless never feels imposed-- only inevitable? In this conversation, Celeste Ng and Peter Ho Davies get specific about how they've done it: Ng on structuring tension around withheld information and dramatic irony, where readers often know more than the characters do, and Davies on plotting through moral complexity and restraint, where what a character chooses not to do drives the story as much as what they do. Together, they'll dig into how plot emerges from character choices rather than external events, how to build momentum without melodrama, and how they know when a plot point is earned versus engineered. Expect a craft-focused conversation with concrete takeaways for anyone wrestling with the architecture of their own story.

Speakers

Celeste Ng

OUR MISSING HEARTS, Author

Celeste Ng is the bestselling author of the novels Everything I Never Told You, Little Fires Everywhere, and Our Missing Hearts. Her writing has been awarded the Massachusetts Book Award and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation, among other honors, and has been translated into more than thirty languages... Read More →

Peter Ho Davies

THE ART OF REVISION: THE LAST WORD, Author

Peter Ho Davies’ most recent books are the novel A Lie Someone Told You About Yourself, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, and The Art of Revision: The Last Word. Other books include the novels The Fortunes, winner of the Anisfield-Wolf Award and the The Welsh Girl, lon... Read More →

Sunday January 17, 2027 9:30am - 10:30am EST
TBA

Track 1: Deep Craft

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Celeste Ng

Peter Ho Davies

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Celeste Ng

Peter Ho Davies

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