EN-478, EN 678  Advanced Fiction Writing, Fall 2009

Dr. Susan Swartwout

Office: GB 318-O; phone 651-2641; sswartwout@semo.edu

 

 

 

• Course Description:  Students will read and practice writing various forms of fiction in a discussion-oriented workshop setting.

• Required texts: Behind the Short Story, Van Cleave and Pierce (editors)

• Required event: at least one Journey Reading Series performance (3 to 4 pm at the Mississippi Mud House on Friday, Sept. 11; Friday, Sept. 25; Friday, October 9; Friday, October 30, Halloween-ish; Friday, November 13; Friday, December 11). If you wish to read at one, the sign-up sheet is on the door at GB 318-O.

• Reading: We will read and discuss “traditional” forms as well as marginalized and experimental works. In addition, we will read essays on contemporary narrative theories and short stories that impact both writer as producer and audience as market.

 • Writing: Writing for the course will focus on short fiction. A portfolio of your work will be developed during the semester. Revisions are a necessary part of any writing course, and the amount of work you invest in your revisions and portfolio will be considered as well as the final drafts of the work. You will also write a professional review of a recently published collection of short fiction, as described below.

• Journal: You’ll also keep a journal in which you will write at least half a page at least three times a week. Journals are a history of your life as well as a goldmine for story ideas. The journals will be included in your portfolio.

Discussion: Participation in workshop discussion is essential. We’ll review our vocabulary of terms, identify audience(s), and help each other to address our work clearly and imaginatively to that audience.

• Format of workshop: Because of the size of this workshop, we will divide into 3 groups and will alternate weeks in which each group's work is discussed. In the week prior to your group’s workshop, you will bring enough copies of your work for each member of the class.  The fiction that you submit to the workshop should not be a first draft, but a revised and thought-out narrative with beginning and end structure. Beginning the next week, we will talk about the work we received the prior week. You are expected to have read each work and made comments both in the margins as you read and summary comments at the end. These will be handed back to the author. Be sure to put your name on the final page in order to acknowledge your comments. It is CRUCIAL that you turn your work in on time and that you attend when your work is being discussed. Don’t waste my time nor the class’s. Not turning in work on time constitutes an “F” quiz grade since this is much more than “daily” work.

• Reader response comments: Your comments as a peer-reader are extremely important, as important to the concept of “workshop” as is your own writing. As you read each of your associates’ work, write down your reactions and corrections directly on the work, both the shorter comments in the margins, then the longer comment reflective of your reading of the entire work. I’ll check your comments from time to time.

• Portfolio: Your final portfolio will consist of at least 30 pages of polished (i.e. extremely well-revised, not just “corrected”) short fiction and your journal.  The short fiction will consist of well-developed work(s), typed and doublespaced. The fiction may be several stories, one story, or a series. Although you will be turning in 30+ pages, be aware that you should be writing much more than this over the semester. The final portfolio should be your best work overall. All pieces included in the final portfolio must have been reviewed by your associates in our workshops or discussed in conference and revised. You will have 4 workshops in which to garner comments on your writing.

And by the by, when I say 30 pages, I mean at least that and not a word less. I don’t fall for the giant-font illusion, so that’s a definite no-no.

Professional review: You will each “adopt” a contemporary writer of short fiction (someone who has been writing and publishing since 1980)

 1) read one of her or his recently published books (with a publication date between 2004 - 2009),

 2) write a review of the writer’s work (minimum, 3 full pages or about 750 words) in professional-review format, and

 3) make a short, informal presentation on the author and the book to the class.

Examples of the review format will be provided. A good presentation will include biographical information about the author, a short excerpt indicative of the writer’s style, and your personal critique of the book. Browse through several books to find a writer whose work piques your interest. Or let’s talk about your interests, and I’ll make a few suggestions.

Conferences: I’m happy to have a conference with you during any office hours (T/R. 2 to 3) or other free time.

Graduate Students: In addition to the regular syllabus, graduate students will complete a paper of six to ten pages, due before Fall Break. The paper will research and explore an element of creative writing pedagogy or theory such that the work furthers a continuing dialogue about the creative-writing process. The topic must be approved by the instructor.

Example topics are “The Function of Memory,” “The Dead Metaphor,” “Advancing the Imagination,” “Pros and Cons of Canonical Curriculum,” “Hemispheric Brain Research’s Findings on Creative Writing,” “Self-editing and Revision,” “Peer Issues in Creative Writing,” a gender issue in creative writing, “Community and the Creative Writing Workshop,” “Altering Cognitive Habits in Creative Writing,” “Form’s Function,” “The Fate of Reading.”

 

Students are expected to know the Student Handbook’s policies on plagiarism, class behavior, and attendance.

 

Basis for Student Evaluation:

 Journal and Quality of final, revised portfolio – 40%

 Participation and reader responses each week – 20%

 Daily assignments and quizzes – 20%

 Book review and its oral presentation – 20%

Graduate students (you must give [and get] 120%) papers – 20%

 

Syllabus: The readings are due to be discussed on the day by which they’re listed. There will be reading quizzes (short little easy tests to determine if you’ve read the story or not.)

08/25 Week 1: intro to the course

09/01 Week 2: read “The Soul Molecule” (pg. 12) and “Generating Story Ideas” (16) by Steve Almond

***Group 1 hands out stories***

09/08 Week 3: read Dr. Ishida Explains His Case” (46) and “The Role of Research in Fiction” (53) by Julianna Baggot

***Group 1 workshop; Group 2 hands out stories***

09/15 Week 4: read “The Children of Dead State Troopers” (275) and “Dialogue” (283) by Keith Lee Morris

***Group 2 workshop; Group 3 hands out stories***

09/22 Week 5: read “Jon” (341) and “Humor and Audience Concerns” (359) by George Saunders

***Group 3 workshop; Group 1 hands out stories***

09/29 Week 6: read “In Case We’re Separated” (111) and “Story Structure” (119) by Alice Mattison

***Group 1 workshop; Group 2 hands out stories***

10/06 Week 7: read “By-and-By” (150) and “Creating Dynamic Characters” (156) by Amy Bloom

***Group 2 workshop; Group 3 hands out stories***

10/13 Week 8: read “Nap Time” (159) and “Story Tension” (162) by Tom Franklin

***Group 3 workshop; Group 1 hands out stories***

10/20 Week 9: read “One of Star Wars, One of Doom” (211) and “Third-person Omniscient Point of View” (225) by Lee K. Abbott

***Group 1 workshop; Group 2 hands out stories***

10/27 Week 10: Read handout “It’s Six A.M. Do You Know Where You Are?” by Jay McInerney

***Group 2 workshop; Group 3 hands out stories***

11/03 Week 11: read “Adultery, A Failing Sestina” (320) and “Revising at the Sentence Level” (326) by Stephen Graham Jones

***Group 3 workshop; Group 1 hands out stories***           

11/10 Week 12: read The Short-short Story and “Writing the Short-short Story” by Tom Hazuka (pp 289-295)

***Group 1 workshop; Group 2 hands out stories***

11/17 Week 13: read “Son of Mogar” (91) and “Story Endings” (106) by Jarret Keene

***Group 2 workshop; Group 3 hands out stories***

NOTE: Next week will be the last week to hand out work for the final workshop. We can workshop up to 10 on a first-come-first-workshopped basis. Let me know this week if you want to put writing into the last workshop. Regardless, there will be class. If no one volunteers, we can—oh, I dunno—free-write for 3 hours or practice creating an index for Sandburg’s six-volume biography of Lincoln.

11/24 Week 14: read handout

***Group 3 workshop; up to 10 class members may hand out work for final workshop ***

12/01 Week 15: Final workshop (no reading)

12/08 Week 16: Discussion of adopted short story collections

 

 

Portfolios are due by Tuesday, Dec. 15 (4 p.m.) of finals week. There will be a collection box by my office door.