A short story, according to Edgar Allen Poe, is a work the reader can read in one sitting for a single unified effect. Every element of the story must contribute to this effect. James Joyce called the ideal result of this effect an epiphany: a sudden and sublime revelation or understanding. To achieve this goal in our own writing endeavors, we must distinguish between varying degrees of lightness and weight and different facets of lightness and weight. Since writing, to reach its final form, often has to do with the subtraction of weight, a set of definitions should be established for weight. This advanced three-week seminar, F160 Lightness and Weight in Fiction, will concentrate on these particular concepts in Italo Calvino's, "Six Memos For The Next Millennium."