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2013-2014 Course Catalog 
    
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2013-2014 Course Catalog [ARCHIVED CATALOG]

Courses

 

  
 
  

  • 55-4304 Dialects and Fiction Writing

    Course provides students with informed training in listening with a good ear and distinguishing between eye dialect and dialect that is both accurately and artistically rendered, with an understanding of the tradition of dialect writing in fiction. Dialect speech and writing have richly contributed to the breadth, variety, and authenticity of American and English literature. Students keep journals and research the ways in which writers employ dialect in their fiction as well as what they have to say about such uses, while also developing a facility with dialect in their own fiction writing.

    4 Credits
    PL
    Requisites COREQUISITES: 55-1101 Fiction Writing I  or 55-4101 Fiction Writing I 
  

  • 55-4305 Suspense Thriller Fiction Writing

    Course requires that students read and analyze contemporary examples of the suspense thriller genre. Suspense, legal and medical thrillers, crime novels, and horror are all various forms of the suspense thriller that make the bestseller lists. In consultation with the instructor, students plan and begin writing their own suspense thrillers.

    4 Credits
    Requisites COREQUISITES: 55-1101 Fiction Writing I  or 55-4101 Fiction Writing I 
  

  • 55-4306 Writing Popular Fiction

    Course investigates a variety of fiction forms written for the popular market, including mysteries, romantic women’s fiction, and dark fantasy novels. Emphasis is on analysis of given genres and characteristics of form and general technique. Students become aware of characteristics that define a popular genre novel and how to apply those defining techniques in their works. Because most popular fiction is market-driven, course includes some discussion of marketing.

    4 Credits
    Requisites COREQUISITES: 55-1101 Fiction Writing I  or 55-4101 Fiction Writing I 
  

  • 55-4307 Researching and Writing Historical Fiction

    Course focuses on the ever-popular genre of historical fiction, which combines the study of research techniques with fictional techniques necessary to produce marketable prose. Through reading, research, and guidance of a historical fiction writer, students produce their own historical fiction. Course fulfills the bibliography and research requirement of the Fiction Writing major.

    4 Credits
    Requisites COREQUISITES: 55-1101 Fiction Writing I  or 55-4101 Fiction Writing I 
  

  • 55-4308 Freelance Applications of Fiction Writing Training

    Course looks at the application of the broad repertoire of fiction-writing techniques and approaches to creative nonfiction and freelance tasks found in various businesses and services including the creative nonfiction that appears in a variety of publications and media. The student develops writing projects suitable for inclusion in his/her professional portfolios.

    4 Credits
    Requisites COREQUISITES: 55-1101 Fiction Writing I  or 55-4101 Fiction Writing I 
  

  • 55-4309 Story to Stage: Adaptation for the Stage

    This course explores possibilities for adapting prose fiction to drama. Course includes readings, discussions, and videotapes of plays based upon fictional works such as The Glass Menagerie, Native Son, Spunk, and Of Mice and Men. Students experiment, creating their own adaptations from selected prose fiction of published authors as well as from their own work. Course is ideal for students wishing to work in script forms for stage, film, radio, TV, or other media.

    4 Credits
    Requisites PREREQUISITES: 55-4323 Playwriting I  
  

  • 55-4310 Playwriting Workshop II

    Course requires that students work with a well-known playwright to develop dramatic sense for scene and overall movement of stage plays, the most important and basic form of script literature. Students read examples of plays and write in class. If possible, plays students write may be given staged readings by accomplished actors. Course focuses on major aspects of starting the play: scene and character development, dialogue, theme and narrative development, shaping of acts, and sounding the play in the voices of peer writers and actors.

    4 Credits
    Requisites PREREQUISITES: 55-4323 Playwriting I 
  

  • 55-4311 Science Fiction Writing

    Course offers a fresh approach to conception and writing of science fiction, with a current overview of the state of the field and techniques. Students develop original material and present their manuscripts to instructor for careful examination, possible class reading, and critique.

    4 Credits
    Requisites COREQUISITES: 55-1101 Fiction Writing I 
  

  • 55-4312 Writing for Children

    Course examines writing books for children–from lap-sitter to young adult, including fiction, creative nonfiction, and plays, with emphasis on characterization, theme, plot, setting, dialogue, and conflict. Professional tips on subject matter of interest to children, preparation of manuscripts for publication, and possible markets will also be studied.

    4 Credits
    Requisites COREQUISITES: 55-1101 Fiction Writing I 
  

  • 55-4313 The Writing Body

    This course explores writing complex and physically believable characters, which begins with an understanding of the writer’s own body. Students use mind/body techniques such as yoga and meditation to cultivate a keener awareness of how the body works and its role in their creative process. Readings are used to analyze and serve as models of how writers and other artists translate physical experiences into art. Each class blends rigorous and relaxing mind/body practice with journals, creative exercises, and a variety of writing forms to challenge students to trust their body as the source of their creativity.

    4 Credits
  

  • 55-4315 Story and Journal

    Course uses students’ personal journals and journals and notebooks of authors such as Melville, Kafka, Nin, and Boll as devices for exploration of the imagination, recording of the living image, and development of various kinds of writing.

    4 Credits
    Requisites COREQUISITES: 55-1101 Fiction Writing I 
  

  • 55-4316 Small Press Publishing

    This course covers the how-to, economic, copyright, technical, and mailing regulation considerations of founding a press or magazine and examines the current, important phenomenon of the developing small-press movement in the American literary scene. Course includes an electronic publication component.

    4 Credits
  

  • 55-4317 College Literary Magazine Publishing

    Course requires that students act as editors and production assistants for the Fiction Writing Department’s award-winning annual publication Hair Trigger. Reading of submitted manuscripts and participating fully in the process of deciding what to publish and how to arrange selections, the students will work closely with the teacher of the course, who will also be faculty advisor for that year’s magazine. The student editors will also be involved in production and marketing procedures. Editors of Hair Trigger have found the experience to be very useful on their resumes and in preparation for entry-level publishing positions.

    4 Credits
    Repeatable
    Requirements Department Permission
  

  • 55-4318 Bibliography and Research for Fiction Writers

    Course helps fiction writers learn how to research many popular genres of fiction and creative nonfiction on any subject area students may want to explore. Researched fiction, commercial and literary, is increasingly in demand. Subjects for research might include historical, legal, scientific, military, archaeological, or classical studies. Fiction writers learn to use multiple facilities of the modern library and other research sources including computers. Students undertake a researched fiction or creative nonfiction project.

    4 Credits
    Requisites COREQUISITES: 55-1101 Fiction Writing I  or 55-4101 Fiction Writing I 
  

  • 55-4319 Creative Nonfiction

    Course concentrates on application of fictional and story-writing techniques to nonfiction writing in the nonfiction novel, story, and memoir, as well as in travel, scientific, and anthropological writing. Books such as Norman Mailer’s Armies of the Night, Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood, and Mark Twain’s Life on the Mississippi are studied. Students with a body of nonfiction material who wish to experiment with its nonfiction novelistic development find the course particularly useful.

    4 Credits
    Requisites COREQUISITES: 55-1101 Fiction Writing I  or 55-4101 Fiction Writing I 
  

  • 55-4320 Fiction Writers and Publishing

    Course is designed to give developing fiction writers an understanding of the publishing industry. Attention is given to the history of fiction publishing in the United States and ongoing changes in the industry. The responsibilities of, and relationships among, writers, editors, literary agents, and publishing houses are explored. Students conduct in-depth research of fiction magazines and publishing houses. Students form their own in-class magazine and submit their work to the other student editors of the magazine. Course is designed for students working towards readying stories for submission. Students are encouraged to send their manuscripts out for publication at intervals during the semester. Guest speakers include bookstore owners, editors, publishers, and published fiction writers.

    4 Credits
    Requisites COREQUISITES: 55-1101 Fiction Writing I  or 55-4101 Fiction Writing I 
  

  • 55-4321 Advanced Science Fiction Writing Workshop

    Workshop course builds on the original science fiction class, focusing on writing skills and techniques unique to the genre. Students practice generating story ideas, tempering imagination with logic, thinking in terms of the future and its multiple possibilities, selecting appropriate characters, and constructing plausible plots. Readings include collected short stories of science fiction master Alfred Bester and individual works by Robert Heinlein, C.M. Kornbluth, and others.

    4 Credits
    Requisites PREREQUISITES: 55-4311 Science Fiction Writing  COREQUISITES: 55-1101 Fiction Writing I  or 55-4101 Fiction Writing I 
  

  • 55-4322 Fantasy Writing Workshop

    Course explores the many facets of fantasy fiction, from heroic fantasy to contemporary fantasy to horror. Students will read classic short stories of the genre, with class discussion focusing on structure, content, the use of imagination combined with plausibility, and how these qualities apply to the student’s own writing.

    4 Credits
    Requisites COREQUISITES: 55-1101 Fiction Writing I  or 55-4101 Fiction Writing I 
  

  • 55-4323 Playwriting I

    Course is an introduction to the basic techniques of structure and dialogue in playwriting. Written exercises must be submitted and discussed to identify dramatic events. Students will initiate the development of a one-act play or the first act of a three-act play.

    4 Credits
  

  • 55-4324 Interactive Storytelling

    Course provides students with basic, hands-on training in order to complete interactive storytelling as well as an exploration of prose forms that adapt readily for Web venues. The internet provides a wealth of writing and publishing opportunities employing a wider range of skills and techniques than is found in print publishing. These projects will include text, creating and preparing images for the Web, planning the flow of a site, and designing pages, as well as creating internal and external links. Students read and view examples from the internet, compare these with print media, and write with these differences in mind.

    4 Credits
    Requisites COREQUISITES: 55-1101 Fiction Writing I 
  

  • 55-4325L Screenwriting Workshop: Coverage of Adapted Screenplays in L.A.

    This course requires that students read and analyze a variety of novels that have been adapted into films. They will also read the scripts based on these works of prose and learn how to do coverage, a standard practice used throughout the studio system. They will also view the films based on these published works. Students will then participate in weekly Q & A sessions with the screenwriters who originally adapted the above material, gaining first-hand knowledge and insight into the adaptation process. Prose and script coverage will be used to analyze different adaptation approaches and will serve as practice for entry-level positions in story editing or development offices in L.A.

    3 Credits
  

  • 55-4326L Topics in Fiction: Techniques and Business of Adaption in L.A.

    This course consists of a lecture series, which will include authors, screenwriters, and producers who have either sold their published works to Hollywood or who have adapted published works for Hollywood. Other guest speakers will include entertainment attorneys and agents who will discuss the legalities of optioning and adapting pre-existing material. There will be almost 40 guest speakers in all.

    3 Credits
  

  • 55-4327L Adaptation in L.A.

    This course requires that students develop a completed work of prose (novel, short story, magazine article, etc.) into an expanded outline, then into a detailed treatment for the screen. The outlining process will involve breaking down the prose, streamlining it into visual and essential pieces of dialogue, then registering the outline at the WGA (which will be a stop on one of our tours). A professional story editor/development executive will then collect an outline from each student, do coverage, then have an individual meeting with each student to discuss vital story points. Based on feedback from the story editor, each student will revise his/her outline, then develop it into a full-length treatment (10-20 pages). Each student will pitch his/her treatments to development executives/producers at the end of the five-week program.

    3 Credits
  

  • 55-4328L Acquiring Intellectual Properties for Adaptation in L.A.

    This course is designed to help students better understand the process of optioning copyrighted work by published authors.

    3 Credits
  

  • 55-4329 Practice Teaching: Outreach

    Specialization course provides increasingly intensive training in the theory and pedagogical approaches of the Story Workshop approach to the teaching of writing. Students begin in Practice Teaching: Tutor Training by tutoring Fiction Writing undergraduates at Columbia College Chicago, and then in Practice Teaching: Outreach move to teaching in a variety of community outreach programs under the auspices of the Fiction Writing Department (often carried out in conjunction with the Center for Community Arts Partnership), either in community arts organizations or in elementary and secondary schools.

    4 Credits
  

  • 55-4330 Advanced Young Adult Fiction

    Course provides students with the opportunity to complete full-length original novellas begun in Young Adult Fiction (55-4301). Emphasis is on deepening understanding of scene, transition, character, and plot development. Rigorous rewriting and revision are key in working toward publishable quality. Students discuss the latest in young adult literature and current trends in publishing.

    4 Credits
    WI
    Requisites PREREQUISITES: 55-1101 Fiction Writing I  and 55-4301 Young Adult Fiction 
  

  • 55-4331 Practice Teaching: Tutor Training

    Course utilizes Story Workshop concepts, philosophy, and teaching techniques to train and provide tutors who, concurrent with their training semester, staff the Fiction Writing Department tutoring program. Tutors assist Fiction Writing students who need help with reading and writing skills. Students are paid for work done in the tutoring program.

    4 Credits
    Requisites PREREQUISITES: 55-4102 Fiction Writing II 
    Requirements Department Permission
  

  • 55-4332 Practice Teaching: Classroom

    Course is an intensive course in Story Workshop theory and practice.

    4 Credits
    Repeatable
    Requisites PREREQUISITES: 55-4331 Practice Teaching: Tutor Training 
    Requirements Department Permission and Permission of Instructor
  

  • 55-4332J Practice Teaching: Advanced Tutor Training - Outreach

    Course will build upon skills for community-based outreach programs acquired in Practice Teaching: Tutor Training through classroom study specific to teaching in campus and civic programs through the student’s own experience or providing tutorial support to youth participants. The classroom activities and tutorials will be extended through the use of online chatrooms where advanced tutors-in-training can exchange ideas, explore problem-solving techniques, and post questions about the theory and practices of outreach teaching. In addition, tutors and tutees can further cyber-chat about works in progress in order to maximize the benefits of the intensive study period.

    4 Credits
    Repeatable
  

  • 55-4333 Playwriting: Advanced

    This course requires that students develop a full-length script through a series of writing explorations that aim to develop the material from different points of view. Students will explore the material through prose, parody, character-development exercises, point-of-view, genre, and collaborative exercises that deepen the students’ understanding of story and situation. Students will also read and discuss plays from a variety of styles and genres to increase their understanding of the range of approaches to writing for performance.

    4 Credits
    Repeatable
    Requisites PREREQUISITES: 55-4310 Playwriting Workshop II  COREQUISITES: 55-1101 Fiction Writing I  or 55-4101 Fiction Writing I 
  

  • 55-4335 Journal and Sketchbook: Ways of Seeing

    This course, open to those interested in writing and/or visual art, will be team-taught by a writer and a visual artist, using interdisciplinary approaches in order to help students better see their narrative work. Kafka, Goya, Faulkner, and others have been inspired by word and image; their journals and sketchbooks show exploration in text, image, and their intersections. Students will consider their written and visual work fully through personal observation, seeing and responding simultaneously, and seeing-in-the-mind through imagination and memory.

    4 Credits
    GA
  

  • 55-4335LDM Journal and Sketchbook: Ways of Seeing

    Kafka, Goya, Faulkner, and others have been inspired by word and image; their journals and sketchbooks show exploration in text, image, and their intersections. Open to those interested in writing and/or visual art, the course will be team-taught by a writer and a visual artist, using interdisciplinary approaches in order to help students better see their narrative and narrative-informed work. Students will consider their written and visual work fully through personal observation, seeing and responding simultaneously, and seeing-in-the-mind through imagination and memory. This course will draw upon literary, historical, and cultural aspects of Florence and Italy, including visiting major sites and museums in one of the world’s most impressive art cities.

    4 Credits
    GA
  

  • 55-4401 CRW: Writers Reading the Tradition

    Course is a lecture and discussion class devoted to reading the historic overview of fiction writing and fiction writers reflecting on the novels and short stories of other writers. Students will come to understand the times and storytelling traditions that influenced such writers as Miguel de Cervantes (Don Quixote), Henry Fielding (Tom Jones), Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice), Gustave Flaubert (Madame Bovary), and Charles Dickens (Great Expectations), as well as writers reflecting upon other writers such as Jonathan Swift, Henry James, D.H. Lawrence, James Baldwin, and Dorothy Van Ghent. In particular, students will reflect on the writing canon to understand that they are writing out of a strong historical tradition of story development.

    4 Credits
    Requisites COREQUISITES: 55-1101 Fiction Writing I  or 55-4101 Fiction Writing I 
  

  • 55-4402 Playwriting Process: Outreach and Inreach

    Course consists of playwriting practice for writers interested in working at the intersection of individual expression and community arts. Students will develop original work by combining community arts techniques and their personal writing processes. Community arts approaches will be learned through the revision of scripts developed through service learning projects. Students will read, discuss, and revise to explore the processes through which the scripts were originally created, and the audiences for whom performances are intended. Writing will be both individual and collaborative.

    4 Credits
    Requisites PREREQUISITES: 55-4323 Playwriting I 
  

  • 55-4403 CRW: Page to Stage

    Course gives playwriting students first-hand experience with the process of bringing a play script through the production process to performance. Students will read scripts of plays currently in production at Columbia and in the Chicago area, then attend rehearsals and productions of these plays. Students will explore the process of getting the dramatic text of a play from the page onto the stage through meetings and discussions with actors, directors, and designers, and in class work. Students will analyze and evaluate production values and respond to texts through journal entries, an oral report, and a final creative nonfiction essay.

    4 Credits
    Requisites PREREQUISITES: 55-4101 Fiction Writing I  and 55-4323 Playwriting I  or 55-1101 Fiction Writing I  and 55-4323 Playwriting I 
  

  • 55-4404J Manuscript Preparation for Writers

    Course teaches students how to prepare final manuscripts. While students will consider the development of manuscript conventions and writing industry standards, they will also compare and contrast how other writers (such as Faulkner, Fitzgerald, and others) have prepared their manuscripts, based on their vision of the final product and its impact on various audiences. Students will learn to give close attention to issues regarding the relationship between story content and the important role of style, punctuation, usage, and the many ways in which the visual appearance and impact of a manuscript’s features (chapters, sections, breaks, etc.) affect not only the way in which the work is received by readers, editors, and publishers, but also how layout/setup affects the manipulation of time, movement, and dramatic impact.

    2 Credits
  

  • 55-4405 CRW: Writers on the Road

    Course exposes students to a wide and diverse range of fiction and creative nonfiction writers who have explored the way in which prolonged or brief exposure to other countries and/or cultures has opened subject matter, story content, and individual voice. From the American road story, to tales of immigrants and emigrants, to adventures abroad–expatriation, political exile, and extended travel–dislocation from the familiar has for centuries played upon the imaginative processes of writers.

    4 Credits
    Requisites COREQUISITES: 55-1101 Fiction Writing I  or 55-4101 Fiction Writing I 
  

  • 55-4406 CRW: American Stage to Screen

    Course requires that students read modern American plays of playwrights such as David Mamet, Tony Kushner, Tennessee Williams, Thornton Wilder, Lillian Hellman, Anna Deavere Smith, Arthur Miller, Milcha Sanchez Scott, and Jose Rivera, and see corresponding film adaptations. Students will analyze and evaluate play texts with attention to characterization, story, plot, narrative movement, and structure that make them viable for the screen. Students will respond to texts and films through journal entries, an oral report, and a final creative nonfiction essay.

    4 Credits
    Requisites COREQUISITES: 55-4101 Fiction Writing I  and 55-4323 Playwriting I  or 55-1101 Fiction Writing I  and 55-4323 Playwriting I 
  

  • 55-4408J Jazz, Blues, Slavery & Voodoo: Reading & Writing New Orleans

    Course explores the use of setting as character, expand the knowledge and appreciation of Southern writers, and learn to successfully incorporate issues of race, class, gender, and the distinct social and political views of the region into their writing to create a depth and subtext often missing from contemporary writing. The readings will explore a broad array of Southern authors writing about slavery, the peculiar social status of quadroons and free men of color, the effects past and present of the Civil War, and life tours, and cultural activities unique to New Orleans. Students will have the opportunity to interact directly with writers, musicians, and other practitioners of New Orleans culture.

    2 Credits
  

  • 55-4409 Study Abroad Prague

    0 Credits
    Requirements Department Permission
  

  • 55-4410J One-Act Play Festival

    Student playwrights, dramaturgs, directors, designers, and actors will collaborate on all aspects of curating, rehearsing, and producing Columbia College Chicago’s One-Act Play Festival under faculty mentorship. Students will become familiar and proficient in their field of study while working intensively in collaboration with other theatre artists and students of arts management to produce a festival. A panel of guest professionals and faculty will attend the festival and offer feedback.

    2 Credits
    Repeatable
    Requisites PREREQUISITES: 55-4310 Playwriting Workshop II  or 31-3800 Playwriting Workshop II 
  
  

  • 55-4413J Writing Abroad

    Dislocation from the familiar has for centuries played upon the imaginative processes of writers. This J-Session course offers an immersion in the literature, art, history, and culture of another city or country. Students read fiction and nonfiction by noted local authors; visit major sites associated with local authors; write journal entries and reading responses; and intensively explore new fictional and creative nonfiction possibilities, as well as having the option of continuing to develop strong writing material from previous classes.

    3 Credits
    Repeatable
    Requisites PREREQUISITES: 52-1111 Writing and Rhetoric I - Enhanced  or 52-1121 Writing and Rhetoric I for Non-Native Speakers of English  or 52-1151 Writing and Rhetoric I  or 52-1151HN Writing and Rhetoric I: Honors  or SAT (Scholastic Aptitude Test) score >= 710 or ACT (American College Test) score >= 30 or COMPASS Placement Test score >= 97
  

  • 55-4500 Topics in FW:Gators, Bayous, Jambalaya and Fais Do-Dos. Fieldwork Among Louisiana

    Course examines a specific topic to strengthen students literacy in the fields of fiction, creative nonfiction and playwriting. Rotating topics may relate to, but not be limited to research, rewriting, performance, blogging and other web applications, collaboration, interviewing, and documenting (utilizing various media) with the goal of publication, staging performances, acquiring specialized knowledge, and understanding writers and the writing process.

    4 Credits
  

  • 55-4501 Topics in Critical Reading and Writing:

    Course requires that qualified students study the works of writers’ processes, styles, techniques and choices by reading and researching published novels, short stories, journals, letters and interviews, as well as author biographies. Students gain in-depth knowledge of the cultural context of authors’ works. Students explore the writing processes of well known authors and the ways in which students’ own responses to the reading can nourish and heighten the development of their own fiction.

    4 Credits
    Repeatable
    Requisites COREQUISITES: 55-1101 Fiction Writing I  or 55-4101 Fiction Writing I 
  

  • 55-4501PR Topics in Critical Reading and Writing

    Course requires that qualified students study the works of writers’ processes, styles, techniques and choices by reading and researching published novels, short stories, journals, letters and interviews, as well as author biographies. Students gain in-depth knowledge of the cultural context of authors’ works. Students explore the writing processes of well known authors and the ways in which students’ own responses to the reading can nourish and heighten the development of their own fiction.

    4 Credits
    Repeatable
    Requisites COREQUISITES: 55-1101 Fiction Writing I  or 55-4101 Fiction Writing I 
  

  • 55-4502 Topics in Fiction Writing

    Courses focus on specific topics, genres, and forms relative to Fiction and Creative Nonfiction Writing (novel, short-story, personal and researched essays, etc.) that might not be included in the current course offerings (eg: Chicago Stories; Gators, Bayous, Jambalaya and Fais Do-Dos: Fieldwork Among Louisiana’s Cajuns). Topics covered may include traditional fiction writing topics, and may also concentrate on experimental forms and trends in contemporary fiction as well as publishing and electronic media.

    4 Credits
    Repeatable
    Requisites COREQUISITES: 55-1101 Fiction Writing I  or 55-4101 Fiction Writing I 
  

  • 55-4502J Topics in Fiction Writing:

    This J-term course focuses on specific topics, genres, and forms relative to fiction and creative nonfiction writing (novel, short story, personal and researched essays, etc.) that might not be included in current course offerings (e.g.: Chicago Stories; Publishing and Contracts; etc). Topics covered may include traditional fiction writing topics, or may concentrate on experimental forms and trends in contemporary fiction as well as publishing and electronic media. Topics will be of appropriate scope to be covered thoroughly during the J-Term.

    2 Credits
    Repeatable
    Requisites PREREQUISITES: 55-1101 Fiction Writing I  OR 55-4101 Fiction Writing I 
  

  • 55-4503 Topics in Playwriting:

    Students write and develop new plays in response to the specific playwriting topic of the semester. Students will study topics such as modern adaptations of Greek or classic plays, or the body of work of one playwright and/or school of playwrights within their cultural and historical context. The course will explore processes; styles, techniques and theatrical choices by reading published and unpublished plays, and when relevant, prose, journals, letters, reviews, and interviews. Students will attend productions of relevant plays.

    4 Credits
    Repeatable
    Requisites COREQUISITES: 55-4323 Playwriting I  OR 24-1710 Scrnwriting I: Writing the Short Film  OR 31-1200 Acting I: Basic Skills  OR 55-1101 Fiction Writing I  OR 55-4101 Fiction Writing I 
  

  • 55-5101 Fiction Writing I

    Emphasizing the dynamic relationship between individual students, the workshop director, and the class, the Story Workshop method is employed to allow students to move at their own pace in developing perceptual, technical, and imaginative abilities in fiction writing.

    3 Credits
  

  • 55-5102 Fiction Writing II

    This course continues the development of perceptual and technical abilities begun in Fiction Writing I, concentrating on point of view, structure, and parody of form. Fiction II is not only a more advanced class–it is quite specifically a continuation of foundations laid in Fiction Writing I, with an emphasis on form and structure, and continued exploration fo imagination, voice, and audience.

    3 Credits
    WI
    Requisites PREREQUISITES: 55-5101 Fiction Writing I  or 55-6101 Fiction Writing I  or 55-4101 Fiction Writing I  or 55-1101 Fiction Writing I 
  

  • 55-5104 Prose Forms

    Aimed toward producing publishable works, this practical exploration uses the Story Workshop Basic Forms and Sense of Address approaches to technical, expository, and persuasive writing, thereby exposing students to the kinds of writing that are generally useful in finding employment in the arts and media fields where writing skills are essential to advancement. The course is also designed to heighten students’ sense for forms and structure in preparation for Fiction Writing: Advanced. The course has strong emphasis on using the identified basic forms in fiction writing and in creative nonfiction.

    3 Credits
    Requisites PREREQUISITES: 55-5102 Fiction Writing II  or 55-6102 Fiction Writing II  or 55-4102 Fiction Writing II 
  
  
  
  

  • 55-5108 Fiction Seminar

    This advanced class in fiction writing will begin with technical or craft matters, then proceed to the more artistic aspects of composing fiction of any length. The craft sessions will address the general nature of communication, involving creating characters (including both their physical and psychological description), dialogue, interior monologue and stream of consciousness, action, pace, point of view, plot, setting, and style. Substantial writing projects will be undertaken by the students and submitted for class analysis and discussion. There will also be extensive use of one-to-one writing conferences between the teacher and the students. Fiction seminar is taught by discussion and critique, rather than the Story Workshop approach.

    3 Credits
    Requisites COREQUISITES: 55-6102 Fiction Writing II  or 55-5102 Fiction Writing II  or 55-4102 Fiction Writing II 
  

  • 55-5108LDM Fiction Seminar

    This workshop will mix Story Workshop approaches to develop the many facets of writing short fiction, novel, and essay material with intensive journal and CRW oral report approaches. Students will intensively explore new ficitonal and creative nonfiction possibilities, as well as have the option of continuing to develop strong writing material from previous classes. The seminar will draw upon literary, historical, and cultural aspects of Florence and Italy.

    3 Credits
  

  • 55-5109 New Plays Workshop

    Playwriting students will work collaboratively with actors, designers and directors to bring their ten-minute and short one-act plays to the stage. Drafts of short plays, written and developed in Playwriting I and II will be read, workshopped, and developed, in a process modeled on professional play development, with professional directors from the Chicago community, advanced student directors, and advanced student actors. Students will experience how collaboration directly informs the writing and rewriting process. The semester will culminate in staged readings of the rewritten short plays presented in one of the Studio Theatres during Performance Week.

    3 Credits
    Requisites PREREQUISITES: 55-5323 Playwriting I  or Equivalent Course 55-5323 Playwriting I  CONCURRENT: 55-5333 Playwriting: Advanced 
  

  • 55-5112 Novel Writing

    Emphasis is on readings, analysis, and criticism of students’ writing in Story Workshop setting. Class is devoted to reading of students’ writings and discussion of extensive assigned readings directed toward enhancement of students’ understanding of literary techniques, process, and values.

    3 Credits
    Requisites PREREQUISITES: 55-5106 Fiction Writing: Advanced  or Equivalent Course 55-5106 Fiction Writing: Advanced 
  
  

  • 55-5202 CRW: First Novels

    This course will expose student writers to the creative and intellectual processes of published writers early in their careers. It will show students that a) writing is an ongoing process of writing and rewriting; b) the creative process is both unique and universal to each writer; and c) published writers faced the same bogeys at the beginning of their careers that student writers face. Through contrast and comparisons (in the journals and class discussions) students will examine and comment on the prose forms, character developments, and story structures first-time novelists have effectively used, along with the writing processes the authors employed to get their first novels finished. Through journal entries and essays, students will examine what all this tells them about how they might go about solving the questions of structure and process presented to them by their own writing. Students will be required to read three novels and conduct research by reading writers’ diaries, notebooks, letters, and autobiographies. There will be discussion of the assigned texts and journal readings every week.

    3 Credits
    Requisites COREQUISITES: 55-5101 Fiction Writing I  or 55-6101 Fiction Writing I  or 55-5102 Fiction Writing II  or 55-6102 Fiction Writing II  or 55-5104 Prose Forms  or 55-5105 Advanced Prose Forms  or   or 55-6110 Thesis Development  or 55-4101 Fiction Writing I  or 55-1101 Fiction Writing I 
  
  
  

  • 55-5205 CRW: Gender and Difference

    This course examines the ways in which gay, lesbian, and straight writers contend with issues of culture, gender, and difference. The course focuses upon such questions as the following: How do straight male and female writers deal with the serious issues and challenges of writing from the point of view of gay and lesbian characters How do gay and lesbian writers deal with the same issues in writing about straight characters The course also examines the particular challenges of writing gender opposites (whatever the sexual orientation of those characters might be). Through the students’ reading of assigned stories and novels, through their written responses as writers to their reading, through creative fiction and nonfiction writing assignments, and through individual and small-group research activities, the course will approach broad and specific issues of gender and difference from early writing to the present day.

    3 Credits
    Requisites COREQUISITES: 55-5101 Fiction Writing I  or 55-6101 Fiction Writing I  or 55-5102 Fiction Writing II  or 55-6102 Fiction Writing II  or 55-5104 Prose Forms  or 55-5105 Advanced Prose Forms  or 55-5106 Fiction Writing: Advanced  or 55-6110 Thesis Development  or 55-4101 Fiction Writing I  or 55-1101 Fiction Writing I 
  

  • 55-5206 CRW: The Novel in Stories

    This course examines the creative and intellectual processes of writers working in nonlinear structure formats. It will try to assess the following: What are the questions writers ask themselves when determining how best to structure a body of work that is more cohesive than a collection of stories, yet not a linear-shaped novel What (or who) are their influences, their models, for the episodic or modular structure Does this structure just happen because a writer is unable to force certain material into following a linear trek, or is the decision made early on as a conscious choice in the creative process Through readings, small group and large group discussions, journal reflections (both students’ and authors’), and research into the authors’ writing processes, students will be able to reflect upon and examine the issues and questions of structure that go into putting together a cohesive body of creative work.

    3 Credits
    Requisites COREQUISITES: 55-5101 Fiction Writing I  or 55-6101 Fiction Writing I  or 55-5102 Fiction Writing II  or 55-6102 Fiction Writing II  or 55-5104 Prose Forms  or 55-5105 Advanced Prose Forms  or 55-5106 Fiction Writing: Advanced  or 55-6110 Thesis Development  or 55-4101 Fiction Writing I  or 55-1101 Fiction Writing I 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

  • 55-5313 The Writing Body

    Writing complex and physically believable characters begins with an understanding of the writer’s own body. Students use mind/body techniques such as yoga and meditation to cultivate a keener awareness of how the body works and its role in their creative process. Readings are used to analyze and serve as models of how writers and other artists translate physical experiences into art. Each class blends rigorous and relaxing mind/body practice with journals, creative exercises, and a variety of writing forms to challenge students to trust their body as the source of their creativity.

    3 Credits
  
  

  • 55-5316 Small Press Publishing

    This course covers the how-to, economic, copyright, technical, and mailing regulation considerations of founding a press or magazine and examines the current, important phenomenon of the developing small-press movement in the American literary scene. Course includes an electronic publication component.

    3 Credits
  

  • 55-5317 College Literary Magazine Publishing

    Students act as editors and production assistants for the Fiction Writing Department’s award-winning annual publication Hair Trigger. Reading of submitted manuscripts and participating fully in the process of deciding what to publish and how to arrange selections, the students will work closely with the teacher of the course, who will also be faculty advisor for that year’s Hair Trigger. The student editors will also be involved in production and marketing procedures. Editors of Hair Trigger have found the experience to be very useful on their resumes and in preparing them for entry-level publishing positions.

    3 Credits
    Requirements Department Permission
  
  
  
  
 

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