2021-2022

Describing fiction writing as an “art” is perhaps a misnomer. Depending on who’s describing it, the process of creating a narrative is more like driving in the dark, or like woodworking, or gardening. It’s like raising a half-formed, misbehaved child and then trying to reason with it. The metaphors abound, but the techniques for creating effective fictional prose are often quite consistent. This course will begin with a weeks-long consideration of selected works of fiction where discussion will aim to distinguish the basic devices of effective storytelling. Weekly topics will range from subjects as broad as point of view and plot arrangement to more highly focused lessons on scene design, dialog, and word choice. Throughout the term, the writing process will be broken down into stages where written work will focus on discrete story parts such as first pages, character introductions, and dialog-driven scenes before students are asked to compose full-length narratives. Along the way, students will chart their processes of conceptualizing, drafting, and revising their narratives. Finally, in the latter weeks of the quarter, emphasis will shift to the workshopping of students’ full stories.

Day/Time: Wednesday, 9:30am-12:20pm

Describing fiction writing as an “art” is perhaps a misnomer. Depending on who’s describing it, the process of creating a narrative is more like driving in the dark, or like woodworking, or gardening. It’s like raising a half-formed, misbehaved child and then trying to reason with it. The metaphors abound, but the techniques for creating effective fictional prose are often quite consistent. This course will begin with a weeks-long consideration of selected works of fiction where discussion will aim to distinguish the basic devices of effective storytelling. Weekly topics will range from subjects as broad as point of view and plot arrangement to more highly focused lessons on scene design, dialog, and word choice. Throughout the term, the writing process will be broken down into stages where written work will focus on discrete story parts such as first pages, character introductions, and dialog-driven scenes before students are asked to compose full-length narratives. Along the way, students will chart their processes of conceptualizing, drafting, and revising their narratives. Finally, in the latter weeks of the quarter, emphasis will shift to the workshopping of students’ full stories.

Day/Time: Wednesdays, 9:30am-12:20pm

This technical seminar explores different theoretical and practical approaches to imagery and description in poetry. To begin with, we’ll try to distinguish between the two terms, to the extent necessary and possible. Then we will examine and practice writing radically different approaches to image making and description (e.g. synesthetic, collaged, surrealist, eco-poetic, abstract, juxtapositional, haiku, etc.). Along the way, we’ll consider theories about the rhetorical functions of imagery and description in the poetic text. Although this course focuses on poetry, it is certainly relevant to prose writers interested in the role of descriptive detail in literary writing, and for comparison we will examine famous examples of description in works of fiction. Students should plan to submit a weekly exercises, write a critical essay, and give a class presentation.

Day/Time: Friday, 11:00am-1:50pm

"Accuracy," according to Mexican novelist Yuri Herrera, "does not mean hitting something on the wall. Rather, one creates the target as the dart is thrown." Style, writers know, does not adorn stories; it builds them. In workshop, we may find it easier to discuss other things-we rightly speak of scenes, point of view, or plot-yet everything that happens in fiction still happens in sentences. In this seminar, we will explore the difficulties both of discussing sentence style and of developing it. After an introduction to some useful concepts in the history and description of sentences, we'll turn to reading and imitating noted stylists such as William Faulkner and Jamaica Kincaid, finding in each writer's sentences the grain of their politics, epistemology, and approach to story. And in the last part of the course students will submit their own exploration of sentence style, whether creative or analytic, to sharpen our knowledge of style's powers.

Day/Time: Thursday, 2:00-4:50pm

"Time is a created thing," according to Lao Tzu. In this course, we will look at how fiction writers "create" the sense of time in their stories, and how they grapple with temporality as an organizing narrative force. To that end, we will study how and why writers implement flashbacks, flash forwards, memories, jump cuts, and repeating scenerios, among other techniques. We will look at both straightforwardly chronological and intuitively nonchronological timelines, and discuss how different temporal approaches create different stories. Readings may include works by Roberto Bolaño, Lauren Groff, and William Maxwell. In addition, please come to class prepared to engage with creative exercises.

Day/Time: Tuesday, 12:30-3:20pm

Some of the most compelling works of fiction are built around moral, social, and psychological dilemmas. Characters are set loose in a dark woods of ambiguity and conflicting values, where they reveal themselves (and their/our humanity) through the decisions they make, the actions they undertake. Such stories present a dramatized prism of arguments and resist easy "lessons." Rather, they end with a question mark that invites conversation between reader and narrative long after the story has ended. The challenge for writers, of course, is to avoid polemic, instead exploring this moral, social, and psychological terrain in a way that is even-handed and flows organically out of character. In this technical seminar, we will read fiction (by writers like James Alan McPherson, Graham Greene, Tayari Jones, and Cynthia Ozick, among others) that centers on an uneasy choice between moral positions. We will examine how the dilemma shapes conflict and plot, and, perhaps most important, how the writer invites the reader to get lost in a dark woods alongside the story's characters. The emphasis of this course will be on critical writing, but students will also have opportunities to write creative responses to the readings and experiment with the craft techniques we discuss.

Day/Time: Thursday, 9:30am-12:20pm

"At certain moments," writes Italo Calvino of his early literary efforts, "I felt that the entire world was turning into stone." Slowness and speed govern not just the experience of writing but also the texture of our fictional worlds. And this is something we can control. Sublimely slow writers like Faulkner or Duras can make time melt; spritely magicians like Bulgakov and Rushdie seem to shuffle planes of reality with a snap of their fingers. This seminar gathers fictions that pulse on eclectic wavelengths, asking in each case how narrative tempo embodies a fiction's character. Our exercises will play with the dial of compositional speed, testing writing quick and slow; alternately, we'll try to recreate the effects of signature texts. Weekly creative and critical responses will culminate in a final project.

Day/Time: Thursday, 2:00pm-4:50pm

The question of which point of view to use is central to any fiction writer beginning a story or a novel, but what does it mean to choose one point of view over another? Who is narrating the story and how does she present herself? Is the narrator speaking directly to the reader, as a character in the story itself? Is she hiding in the shadows, trying to be as invisible as possible? Does she have a god-like omniscience, narrating from on high? Or does she exist in a liminal state, narrating through both a character and herself simultaneously through “free indirect discourse"? How does a writer's choice of POV and narrative distance affect such things as voice, rate of revelation, and even worldbuilding? How does it affect the reader's experience? And how can a writer maximize their choice of POV to best serve the story they want to tell? Students will read various works of long and short fiction in different POVs to study their effects, as well as critical and craft texts. They will write weekly reading responses as well as creative exercises. Each student will also be expected to give a presentation and write a final creative / analytical paper for the class.

Day/Time: Tuesday, 11:00am-1:50pm

John Gardner said that the writer’s task is to create “a vivid and continuous fictional dream.” This technical seminar will focus on the role of detail in maintaining this dream. In this course we will deconstruct and rebuild our understanding of concepts like simile, showing vs. telling, and symbolism, asking what these tools do and what purpose they serve. Drawing from fiction and essays from Ottessa Moshfegh, Barbara Comyns, Zadie Smith, and others, students will practice noticing, seeing anew, and finding fresh and unexpected ways of describing. We will also examine what is worthy of detail in the first place, how detail functions outside of traditional scene, and the merits and limits of specificity, mimesis, and verisimilitude. Finally we will consider what it means to travel across a landscape of vagueness and euphemism as we search for the quality of “thisness” that James Wood claims all great details possess. In addition to assigned readings, students will be responsible for reading responses, short craft analyses, vigorous class participation, and several creative exercises and peer critiques applying these lessons.

Day/Time: Thursday, 11:00am-1:50pm

This reading and writing seminar will focus on works of literature that have found shape and substance via documents such as letters, diary entries, newspaper clippings, legal documents, medical records, and more. Students will analyze the causes and effects of the archival impulse on various craft elements, including: dramatic pacing, narrative persona, structure, and theme. Students will conduct independent research according to the genre of their choosing (from memoirs to novels and poems) and write short critical reading reports throughout the quarter. All the while, students will compose and/or compile their own archival materials for creative experiments that test the limits and possibilities of the craft.

Day/Time: Thursdays, 11:00am-1:50pm