Fiction Writing

3 units

In this course, students will write, learn how to read like a writer, and write some more. The focus will be on short fiction, and the approach will be to explore the stages linking inspiration to the final (or nearly final) draft -- in other words, students will explore how to find a story idea and how to grow it. The course will be run as a virtual workshop, which means that students will be actively engaged in meaningful online discussions about their classmates' original works-in-progress, and they will make their own compositions available for such discussions. Students will also be prompted--via regular weekly reading responses and writing exercises--to examine common craft-of-fiction elements, from the basic building blocks of stories such as details, characters, and dialogue to more slippery units of narrative design such as scene, summary, point of view, and theme. Along the way, the class will also read a range of published short stories, from classics to works by contemporary masters.