Intermediate Creative Writing: Fiction
English 320, Fall 2006
SHD 229, MWF 1-1:50
Kelly Magee
MWF, 11-1
kmagee29@gmail.com
Texts and Supplies:
Denman, Margaret-Love and Barbara Shoup. Story Matters: Contemporary Short Story
Writers
Share the Creative Process. Houghton Mifflin, 2006.
Photocopies of stories for workshop
A writer’s notebook
Introduction and Objectives:
*English 226 is the prerequisite to this course. If you have not completed it, you must do so before registered for 320.
English 320 is a course in fiction writing with special emphasis on the short story. “The short story,” though, is a vast category, including everything from a single sentence to around 20,000 words, genre and literary, experimental and mainstream . . . you get the picture. For the purposes of this class, we’ll be focusing on literary fiction of roughly 1-8,000 words, the cutoff for many lit journals. Literary, in this case, simply means fiction that is driven by inquiry – a search for truth, questions about a character – rather than dictated by a formula.
Throughout the course, you’ll focus on cultivating craft – the tricks of the trade, the ways to woo your reader or grab them by the throat – with particular attention to what makes a story work. The best stories are not the easy or obvious ones, but the ones that stick with you long after you’ve put them down, that make you understand the world in a new way. Even for the most revolutionary stories, however, there are similar building blocks. You’ll study the “rules” of fiction writing closely, and then we’ll talk about how to use them, subvert them, trash them, or turn them on their heads.
An equally important goal for this course is to read short stories. Your best teachers are your favorite stories, and serious writers read constantly and widely. I’ll present you with a sampling of contemporary writing, but my best advice is to read everything you can get your hands on.
From you, I expect dedication to the practice of writing, enthusiasm in class, ambitious story ideas, and a commitment to revision and craft. Embrace the writer’s life for a semester, and see if you don’t fall in love with it. For your efforts, I’ll reward you with close reads of your work, stimulating class discussion and comments, and possibly the most fun course you can take in college (I know my fiction workshops were).
Requirements:
Exercises – 20%: While there are no page limits, you must make a good faith effort on all exercises. I recognize that some exercises may inspire you, but some decidedly may not. If you tire after a page or so, stop. If you find yourself inspired, keep going as long as you can. Ideally, several of these will lead to full-length stories. In any case, try all of them because some might surprise you. Because my choice of exercise depends on class discussion and interest, these are not listed on the syllabus, so please pay careful attention to in-class assignments and keep track of all exercises you complete. For every two exercises you fail to complete, your grade will drop by a +/-.
Stories: You’ll write two new stories (nothing recycled from other courses). These will be handed in according to the workshop schedule and revised for the portfolio. You’ll get detailed
comments on each story but no grades until the portfolio.
Workshop Participation – 15%: For every story workshopped, prepare a typed critique, one copy for the author and one for me. See the attached handout on “Holding the Story in Question” for ideas on what to write about. Late work is not accepted. For every two critiques you miss, your grade will fall by a +/-. Please clearly indicate your name and the author’s name.
Attendance, Class
Participation, and
Craft Project and Presentation – 5%: This project will give you a broader, more personalized look at a variety of writing. It consists of outside reading and a 5-10 minute presentation. This may be either verbal, or as a written handout distributed to the class. Your options are:
o Choose a story from Appendix A in Writing Matters (p.485) and present it to the class. Focus on craft – not necessarily whether the story is good or not, but what it’s doing that interests you.
o Choose a craft book from Appendix B in Writing Matters (p.487) and present/develop an exercise from it for the class.
o Choose
a story that we read in class that you were the most interested in. Look it up in the acknowledgments section of Writing Matters (p.489), find the book
it came from, and present that book to the class.
Portfolio – 50%: The end-of-the-quarter portfolio is the bulk of your grade. It consists of all your exercises, the first drafts of your stories, and your revisions. Each story must have been turned in on time to be eligible for the portfolio. Grading will be done with equal attention to the quality of writing and the revision done. Stories that receive the highest grades show a sophisticated understanding of technique, have a meaning or purpose, avoid clichéd language and trite characters, plots, and settings, and show evidence of emotional investment. These stories may experiment with language and structure, but not at the expense of clarity.
Mechanics:
All out-of-class writing should be typed, double-spaced with one-inch margins. Please remember to number all your pages – workshop gets tricky if you don’t. All stories should be as polished as you can make them. That means, the work you turn in should be as close to finished as you can muster. If you turn in a draft that you know has specific problems, workshop will be less effective because we’ll be telling you what you already know. Remember, too, that errors and grammatical issues detract from the experience of reading and are likely to influence the kind of critiques you get. Rather than lots of suggestions about how to use commas, you’ll learn more about how to tweak your character, or where the meaning of the story lies. Exhibit professionalism when submitting work and we’ll treat your writing with the utmost respect.
Strong Suggestions:
While I’ll not be collecting and grading it, I encourage you to keep a writer’s notebook. This is different from a journal, where you jot down your thoughts and emotions, maybe what happened during the day. The writer’s notebook is your place to keep story ideas, fragments of unusual conversations, situations you think might make good plots, titles, and notes on what you’ve discovered about the process of writing. This can take the form of a traditional spiral notebook, but I’ve seen lots of variations. One thing I’d suggest is spending money on something you’d like to carry around. Whether this means a journalist’s flip notebook that fits in your pocket, or an artist’s sketchbook with thick pages, or a book of recycled paper, if you buy something you like, you’re more likely to use it. Alternatively, some people keep special folders on their computers for notebook ideas. Whatever is most convenient for you is fine. The most important thing is that you get into the daily practice of translating experience into language.
Here’s a partial list of some supplementary reading. These are texts I considered for the course, and which I found particularly helpful to my own writing.
The Best American Short Stories Series.
Bailey, Tom. On Writing Short Stories.
Burroway, Janet. Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft.
Gardner, John. The Art of Fiction.
Goldberg, Natalie. Writing Down the Bones.
Johnston, Sibyl. Where Stories Come From.
Lamott, Annie. Bird by Bird.
The O.Henry Awards Series.
The
Pushcart Prize Series.
*This syllabus is subject to change.