English 100FA - Spring, 2013

Creative Writing: Advanced Fiction

Class Information

Instructor: Houston, Pam
Time: W 4:10-7:00
Location: 308 Voorhies

Description

This course will be an intensive and advanced fiction workshop. We will discuss structure, shape, point of view, dialogue, narrative strategies, and both traditional and experimental forms. We will work toward demystifying some of the essential components of fiction (image, metaphor, voice, character, scene, among others) and turning them into comprehensible tools that are at our disposal. At the same time we will honor (and hope for) the inexplicable flights of creativity (and madness?) that take a good story and make it great.
We will talk about the borderlands between fiction and nonfiction, between fiction and social commentary, and the ever shifting relationship between fiction, place (landscape), and time (historical moment).
In addition to the specifics of fiction writing, we will talk about art in a larger context, and the series of decisions that make a person decide to pursue the making of art as a way of being in the world. To this end, students will be asked to think across genres and forms.
In addition to the required texts each student will be asked to attend three events during the quarter. Two of these will be readings by authors whose books we are reading in class, Josh Weil and Joshua Mohr. The third event will be of the student’s choosing and can be a literary event but can also be any cultural event that the student can make a case for calling art (theater, dance, music of any kind, NBA basketball, cage fighting, etc.) Each student will report to the class on his/her experience at those events.
Each student will be expected to turn in three new pieces of fiction during the course of the semester (either stories or novel chapters), and turn in approximately 35-50 pages of workshopped and polished fiction by the end of the semester. There will be some reading and brief weekly exercises at the beginning of the semester that will become optional as we get farther into the real work.

Grading

Grades will be assigned as follows:

Submitted manuscripts (3): 50%
Detailed and considered critique of fellow students' work: 25%
Completion of exercises and reading assignments (as evidenced by class discussion): 15%
Attendance: 10%

Texts

The Tenth of December, George Saunders
Battleborn, Claire Vaye Watkins
The New Valley, Josh Weil
Fight Song, Joshua Mohr