Creative Writing: Advanced Fiction
Class Information
Instructor: Corin, Lucy
Time: M 3:10-6:00
Location: 308 Voorhies
Description
This advanced level fiction writing workshop is designed for our strongest fiction writers, including but not limited to students admitted to the creative writing honors program. Admission is by application for a limited number of seats. While many of the works we read and write will be informed by and influenced by mass market culture, we assume, in this class, a desire to create a work of art rather than a bestseller. My goal is to have a group of students equally dedicated to learning about fiction writing, students who write on their own, read challenging fiction on their own, and are a little if not a lot obsessed with narrative. My approach focuses on a writer?s relationship with what she consumes (books, art, culture), and detailed attention to language on the sentence level. We look at each individual piece of writing as a discrete entity, with a particular way relating to its generic form. We use a workshop/discussion format an approach it with a critical eye. We read a wide range of model works of fiction in order to explore the elasticity of the form and practice of making literary art. Students can expect write about 30 pages of original fiction, in some combination of micro or flash fictions, experimental pieces, full-length short stories or novella drafts, and intense revisions.
Grading
Holistic grading that expects perfect or almost perfect attendance; engaged, insightful, consistent participation in class discussion and peer critique; creative output that challenges its author and grows over the quarter; all work turned in on time in of high quality; thoughtful and precisely articulated analytic work in response to assigned readings.
Texts
New American Stories, Ed. Ben Marcus (Vintage)