Fiction Writing Workshop

3 Credits · Level: Undergraduate

In this class, you’ll answer the question “What Is a Story?” To do that, you’ll immerse yourselves in the art and discipline of story writing. Partly this means acquiring a writer’s critical eye for fiction, so you’ll study the basic elements of successful fiction (character, plot, description, etc.) and use these tools to read and analyze stories. Specifically, we’ll be considering the example of Jewish fiction, surveying the short story tradition in Jewish literature. Because the writer above all learns through doing, you’ll write a great deal of your own fiction (which does not need to be Jewish, of course)—regular exercises as well as more fully developed and revised work. Much of this development will happen as a result of the workshop process, where you’ll give one another extensive feedback on work submitted to the class as a whole.