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2013-2014 Course Catalog [ARCHIVED CATALOG]
Creative Writing
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Bachelor of Arts
Bachelor of Fine Arts
Master of Fine Arts
Minor
55-1100 Introduction to Fiction Writing
Course is intended for entering freshmen who have an interest in fiction writing. Students write and read fiction and become acquainted with story and basic techniques of storytelling in various media such as film, theater, and oral storytelling. Course prepares a sound foundation for Fiction Writing I. (Course is not required for entrance into Fiction Writing I and does not count toward the major.)
3 Credits
55-1101 Fiction Writing I
This course is the first one in the core sequence. 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. No prerequisites, though either Introduction to Fiction Writing or English Composition are helpful.
4 Credits
55-1200 CRW: Fiction Writers I
Course develops writers’ approach to reading and to writing about literature being read as an integral, dynamic part of the writers’ process, development, and career. Journals and other writings by such authors as D.H. Lawrence, Richard Wright, and Virginia Woolf are used as examples of how writers read and write about what they read in order to learn to develop dimensions of their own fiction and to become aware of their uniqueness and commonality with other writers’ efforts. Manuscripts and notes of famous works may be used to show writers’ processes and development.
4 Credits
Requisites COREQUISITES: 55-1100 Introduction to Fiction Writing or 55-1101 Fiction Writing I or 55-4101 Fiction Writing I
55-1305 Story in Fiction and Film
Course critically explores the elements of fiction writing as they are translated on film: voice, point of view, dialogue, scene, structure, and other fictional forms. Fiction has been an important source for cinematic storytelling since its earliest incarnations. Students will view films, read fictional excerpts, discuss techniques, and hear speakers, studying how these elements can be used to heighten their own stories. Course will be helpful for students interested in studying fiction, film, and other arts and media disciplines.
3 Credits
55-1306 Story in Fiction and Film: International
Course critically explores the elements of fiction writing as they are translated to film with an emphasis on foreign and international stories: voice, point of view, dialogue, scene, structure, and other fictional forms. Fiction has been an important source for cinematic storytelling since its earliest incarnations. Students will view films, read fictional excerpts, discuss techniques, and hear speakers, studying how these elements can be used to heighten their own stories. Course will be helpful for students interested in studying fiction, film, and other arts and media disciplines.
3 Credits
GA
55-1307J The Radio Narrative - Tell Your Story
Course will focus on the craft of writing and producing effective radio narratives with emphasis on writing for the ear, sound usage, and basic sound and spoken word audio editing. The Radio Narrative has become a major force in radio creativity mainly through the work of writers, storytellers, and memoir artists producing work for National Public Radio International and other independent radio/audio venues. Each student will produce a completed radio narrative, working from an already written piece (redrafting it for broadcast writing) or writing an entirely new work. Course will progress as a workshop focusing on story development, writing, and basic radio/audio production.
1 Credits
55-1310 Exploring Science Fiction Writing
Exploring Science Fiction Writing is designed for anyone interested in writing Science Fiction. This genre has become a significant element of contemporary culture. Through writing, research, reading, creative practice, and multimedia, this course will explore the many ways Sci-Fi’s themes and narratives have captured the imagination of a sophisticated and changing world. This is an introductory level class with an interdisciplinary focus, open to Fiction Writing majors and non-majors for college-wide elective credit.
3 Credits
55-1311 Exploring Popular Fiction Writing
Exploring Popular Fiction Writing is designed for anyone interested in writing in the Popular Fiction genres. Popular Fiction (mystery, thriller, horror, romance, graphic stories, etc.) and its themes, styles, and tropes, provide the wellspring for television, motion pictures, games, and emerging media. This course explores the conventions and approaches of popular fiction, discuss history, psychology, and sociology as reflected and influenced by popular fiction, and gives students a chance to write brief works of popular fiction. This is an introductory level class with an interdisciplinary focus, open to Fiction Writing majors and non-majors for college-wide elective credit.
3 Credits
55-1312 Exploring Fantasy Genre Writing
Exploring Fantasy Genre Writing is designed for anyone interested in writing Fantasy. The course will expose students to Fantasy’s vast reach across a wide array of media and forms including fiction, film, music, theatre, art, photography, television, fashion, comics, poetry, games, and other arts. Discussion and research of the genre will give way to practical application in writing and creating Fantasy works in several of the forms explored in the class. This is an introductory level class with an interdisciplinary focus, open to Fiction Writing majors and non-majors for college-wide elective credit.
3 Credits
55-1330 Tutoring Fiction Writing Skills
Tutorial course addresses basic skills in grammar and punctuation, fiction writing, rewriting, editing, journal writing, organization, and more. Story Workshop Tutorial Program is designed for students concurrently enrolled in Fiction Writing Workshop, Prose Forms, Critical Reading and Writing, and Specialty Writing classes. Many students find one-on-one attention of a tutor, who is an advanced writing student, gives their writing added energy and clarity and helps them make valuable discoveries.
1-2 Credits
Repeatable
Requisites CONCURRENT: 55-4101 Fiction Writing I or 55-1100 Introduction to Fiction Writing or 55-1101 Fiction Writing I or 55-4102 Fiction Writing II or 55-4104 Prose Forms or 55-4106 Fiction Writing: Advanced
55-3088 Internship: Fiction Writing
Course provides internships to advanced students with an opportunity to gain work experience in an area of concentration or interest while receiving academic credit toward their degrees.
1-4 Credits
Repeatable
Requirements Internship Coord. Perm.
55-3090 Independent Project: Fiction Writing
Course requires that students design an independent project, with approval of a supervising faculty member, to study an area that is not presently available in the curriculum. Prior to registration, the student must submit a written proposal that outlines the project. Course is intended generally for upper-level students.
1-4 Credits
Repeatable
Requisites PREREQUISITES: 55-4101 Fiction Writing I or 55-1101 Fiction Writing I
Requirements Department Permission
55-3300 Writer’s Portfolio
Course requires that students develop and build a writing portfolio that showcases strong examples of their writing done in Fiction Writing Department classes and elsewhere to present for possible employment or application to graduate school. Students will learn about professional portfolio presentation and the role portfolios play in persuading employers and graduate-admission committees in the fields of writing. Students will rewrite pieces of their own writing, including a range of various writing forms that are key to a successful portfolio and that they wish to include in their final portfolio project. Examples could include cover letters, letters of inquiry, research on publishing markets, stories, and essays. Additional forms may include resumes, clips of feature writing, writing for media, advertising, scripts, business, and other forms of writing that show the student’s writing strengths. It is open to all students and is a capstone course for the BFA in Fiction Writing degree.
4 Credits
Requisites PREREQUISITES: 55-4101 Fiction Writing I and 55-4102 Fiction Writing II and 55-4104 Prose Forms and 55-4106 Fiction Writing: Advanced or 55-4102 Fiction Writing II and 55-4104 Prose Forms and 55-4106 Fiction Writing: Advanced and 55-1101 Fiction Writing I
55-3301 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 PREREQUISITES: 55-1101 Fiction Writing I and 55-4102 Fiction Writing II or 55-4101 Fiction Writing I and 55-4102 Fiction Writing II COREQUISITES: 55-4104 Prose Forms
55-3999 Directed Study: Fiction Writing
This course consists of learning activities involving student independence within the context of regular guidance and direction from a faculty advisor. Directed Studies are appropriate for students who wish to explore a subject beyond what is possible in regular courses or for students who wish to engage in a subject or activity not otherwise offered that semester by the College. Directed Studies involve close collaboration with a faculty advisor who will assist in development and design of the project, oversee its progress, evaluate the final results, and submit a grade.
1-4 Credits
55-4101 Fiction Writing I
Course is the first class in the core sequence. 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. No prerequisites, though either Introduction to Fiction Writing or English Composition are helpful.
4 Credits
55-4102 Fiction Writing II
Course is the second class in the core curriculum for the Fiction Writing major. 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 organized along principles of parodying structure and style of literary models while encouraging students to develop their own material, both in major parody assignments and in other writings.
4 Credits
WI
Requisites PREREQUISITES: 55-1101 Fiction Writing I or 55-4101 Fiction Writing I
55-4104 Prose Forms
Course is the third class in the core sequence. Aimed toward producing publishable works, this practical exploration uses Story Workshop basic forms and sense-of-address approaches to creative nonfiction, technical, expository, and persuasive writing, thereby exposing students to the kinds of writing generally useful in finding employment in arts and media fields where writing skills are essential to advancement. Course is also designed to heighten students’ sense of forms and structure in preparation for Fiction Writing: Advanced. Strong emphasis is placed on using the identified basic forms in fiction writing and in exposition.
4 Credits
Requisites PREREQUISITES: 55-4102 Fiction Writing II
55-4105 Advanced Prose Forms
Course uses Sophisticated Story Workshop basic forms and sense-of-address techniques to advance students’ development of prose forms and publishable creative nonfiction.
4 Credits
Requisites PREREQUISITES: 55-4104 Prose Forms
55-4106 Fiction Writing: Advanced
Course is the fourth class in the core sequence. It uses the Story Workshop approach to develop facets of writing short fiction and novels. Students intensively explore new fictional possibilities as well as have the option of continuing to develop strong writing material from previous classes. Workshop may have an emphasis on point of view and/or rewriting. Course is repeatable.
4 Credits
Repeatable
Requisites PREREQUISITES: 55-4102 Fiction Writing II and 55-4104 Prose Forms
55-4106PR Fiction Writing: Advanced
Course is the fourth class in the core sequence. It uses the Story Workshop approach to develop facets of writing short fiction and novels. Students intensively explore new fictional possibilities as well as have the option of continuing to develop strong writing material from previous classes. Workshop may have an emphasis on point of view and/or rewriting. Course is repeatable.
4 Credits
Repeatable
Requisites PREREQUISITES: 55-4102 Fiction Writing II and 55-4104 Prose Forms or and 55-4104 Prose Forms
55-4108 Fiction Seminar
Advanced course in fiction writing begins with technical or craft matters, then proceeds to more artistic aspects of composing fiction of any length. Craft sessions address general nature of communication involving character creation, including both physical and psychological descriptions, dialogue, interior monologue and stream of consciousness, action, pace, point of view, plot, setting, and style. Substantial writing projects are undertaken by students and submitted for class analysis and discussion.
4 Credits
Requisites PREREQUISITES: 55-4104 Prose Forms
55-4108LDM Fiction Seminar
Workshop course 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. Seminar will draw upon literary, historical, and cultural aspects of Florence and Italy.
4 Credits
GA
55-4109 New Plays Workshop
Course pairs student directors and playwrights to develop a playwright’s script. Students begin collaboration by discussing plays in terms of the proposed production. The director subjects the script to a reading series, which results in rewrites by the playwright. The director presents a first-draft production analysis of the play. The semester culminates in a stage reading of the final draft and a final presentation of the director’s production analysis.
3 Credits
Repeatable
Requisites PREREQUISITES: 31-3800 Playwriting Workshop II or 55-4310 Playwriting Workshop II CONCURRENT: 55-4333 Playwriting: Advanced or 31-3801 Playwriting: Advanced
55-4112 Novel Writing
Course emphasizes 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.
4 Credits
Requisites PREREQUISITES: 55-4106 Fiction Writing: Advanced and 55-4104 Prose Forms
55-4201 CRW: Autobiographical Fiction
Course requires that students read fiction known to be autobiographical in nature and respond with journal entries and classroom discussion. Students research primary sources concerning a writer, his or her work, and the process by which the work came into being; give an oral report; and write a final essay. Students read aloud journal entry responses to readings and write their own autobiographical fiction, some of which is read and responded to in class.
4 Credits
Requisites COREQUISITES: 55-1101 Fiction Writing I or 55-4101 Fiction Writing I
55-4202 CRW: First Novels
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.
4 Credits
Requisites COREQUISITES: 55-1101 Fiction Writing I or 55-4101 Fiction Writing I
55-4203 CRW:Fiction Writers & Censorship
Course emphasizes research, writing, and discussion of creative processes of successful writers, among them Lawrence, Flaubert, Hurston, Wright, Selby, Joyce, and Burroughs, who have been forced to confront directly forms of censorship or marginalization. Writers must be free to draw on their strongest material and use their best, most authentic, telling voices. However, writers often confront external or internal inhibitions: outright legal challenges, vocal attacks upon certain types of stories, subtle publishing prejudices, or self-censoring.
4 Credits
Requisites COREQUISITES: 55-1101 Fiction Writing I or 55-4101 Fiction Writing I
55-4204 CRW: Drama and Story
Course requires that students read plays and stories by successful authors who explore dramatic techniques helpful to the development of fiction. Students will respond to these works as writers in journal entries, research and discuss writers’ creative processes, give oral reports, and write essays. Students complete creative writing assignments that incorporate dramatic techniques under study into their own fiction.
4 Credits
Requisites COREQUISITES: 55-1101 Fiction Writing I or 55-4101 Fiction Writing I
55-4205 CRW: Gender and Difference
Course examines the ways in which gay, lesbian, and straight writers contend with issues of culture, gender, and difference. 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 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.
4 Credits
PL
Requisites COREQUISITES: 55-1101 Fiction Writing I or 55-4101 Fiction Writing I
55-4206 CRW: The Novel in Stories
Course examines creative and intellectual processes of writers working in nonlinear structure forms. It raises 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 linearly shaped novel. Through readings, small group and large group discussions, journal reflections (both students’ and authors’), and research into the authors’ writing processes, students are able to reflect upon and examine issues and questions of structure that go into putting together a cohesive body of creative work.
4 Credits
Requisites COREQUISITES: 55-1101 Fiction Writing I or 55-4101 Fiction Writing I
55-4207 CRW:19th Century Russian Authors
Course requires that students research the reading and writing processes behind selected novels and short stories by Russian masterpiece authors and give their own oral and written responses as writers to the material they are reading. Research examines the personal and social contexts in which masterpeice works were written, as well as the ways in which writers read, respond to what they read, and incorporate their reading and responses to reading dynamically to their own fiction-writing process. Drawing upon authors’ journals, notebooks, and letters, as well as upon more authors and the ways in which students’ own responses may nourish and heighten the development of their fiction.
4 Credits
Requisites COREQUISITES: 55-1101 Fiction Writing I or 55-4101 Fiction Writing I
55-4208 CRW: Contemporary European Masterpiece Authors
This course researches the writing processes of contemporary European writers, including the ways in which their reading and responses to reading play influential roles in the overall fiction-writing process. Journals and other writings by contemporary European authors will be used as examples of how writers develop dimensions of their own fiction and see their work in relation to other writers. Course involves study of the development of diverse techniques and voices of some of the most prominent contemporary European authors, the so-called post-war generation, in such countries as France, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Yugoslavia, Russia, and others.
4 Credits
Requisites COREQUISITES: 55-1101 Fiction Writing I or 55-4101 Fiction Writing I
55-4208PR CRW: Continental European Writers
In this course students will research the writing processes of the most notorious twentieth century writers of Continental Europe-F. Kafka, G. Myerink, C. Capek, J. Hasek, M. Kundera, and others-whose lives and work were inseparable from Prague. In addition to their novels and stories, journals, diaries and other tools of the craft will be used to gain deeper insights into and understanding of how these writers developed dramatic new dimensions of the art of fiction. The advantage of being on sites where writers lived and worked will be used to full extent.
4 Credits
Requisites COREQUISITES: 55-1101 Fiction Writing I or 55-4101 Fiction Writing I
55-4209 CRW: Contemporary Russian Authors
This course requires that students research reading and writing processes behind selected novels and short stories by principal masterpiece authors of the Soviet period from 1920 to present, such as Bulgakov, Babel, Olesha, Erofeev, Platonov, Sokolov, and others. Drawing upon authors’ journals, notebooks, and letters, as well as upon more public writing and interviews, students examine the personal and social contexts in which writers read and respond to what they read. Students give oral and written responses as writers to material.
4 Credits
Requisites COREQUISITES: 55-1101 Fiction Writing I or 55-4101 Fiction Writing I
55-4210 CRW: Latin-American Writers
Course researches writing processes of Latin-American writers, including ways in which Latin-American writers’ reading and responses to reading influence the overall fiction-writing process. Journals and other writings by Latin-American authors are used as examples of how writers read and write about what they read to develop dimensions of their fiction and see their work in relation to that of other writers.
4 Credits
Requisites COREQUISITES: 55-1101 Fiction Writing I
55-4211 CRW: American Voices
Course researches writing processes of African-American, Hispanic-American, Native-American, and Asian-American writers and other ethnic American writers and the ways in which their reading and responses to reading play an influential role in the fiction-writing process. Particular emphasis will be placed upon taking the point of view of racial and ethnic opposites. Journals and other writings are used as examples of how writers read and write about what they read to develop dimensions of their own fiction and how they see their work in relation to that of other writers. Manuscripts and notes of famous works may be used to show writers’ processes and development.
4 Credits
PL
Requisites COREQUISITES: 55-1101 Fiction Writing I or 55-4101 Fiction Writing I
55-4213 CRW: Fiction Writers as Creative Non-Fiction Writers
Course explores ways in which published writers bring their knowledge of fiction writing techniques such as dramatic scene, image, voice, story movement, and point of view to the writing of creative nonfiction. Using primarily journals, letters, and other private writings, students will research the writing processes of established fiction writers who have worked extensively in creative nonfiction modes–writers as diverse as Mark Twain, Isak Dinesen, Virginia Woolf, Zora Neale Hurston, John Edgar Wideman, Gretel Ehrlich, James Alan McPherson, Scott Russell Sanders, Alice Walker, Joyce Carol Oates, David Bradley, and others. In addition to offering insights about widening writing options in a growing nonfiction market for fiction writers, this course aids in development of oral, written, and research skills useful for any major and communications-related career.
4 Credits
Requisites COREQUISITES: 55-1101 Fiction Writing I or 55-4101 Fiction Writing I
55-4215 CRW: Women Writers
This course researches writing processes of women writers and ways in which their reading and responses to reading play influential roles in the fiction-writing process. Journals and other writings by Virginia Woolf, Zora Neale Hurston, Katherine Anne Porter, Katherine Mansfield, Eudora Welty, Toni Cade Bambara, and others are used as examples of how writers read, write about what they read to develop their fiction, and see their work in relation to other writers’ works. Manuscripts and notes of famous works may be used to show writers’ processes and development. Students’ own fiction writing is also part of the course.
4 Credits
PL
Requisites CO-REQUISITES: 55-4104 Prose Forms
55-4216 CRW: Short Story Writers
Course encourages development of lively, well-crafted, short fiction by examining reading and writing processes that guide some of the best examples of the form. Students select from a wide range of writers, representing many different voices, backgrounds, subjects, and approaches, to research ways in which writers read, respond to their reading, and use that reading to generate and heighten their short stories. Students write their responses to reading short stories and discuss the relationship of reading to the development of their own fiction.
4 Credits
Requisites COREQUISITES: 55-4104 Prose Forms
55-4217 CRW: Novelists
Course examines the ways in which novelists read, respond to what they read, and incorporate their reading responses dynamically into their own fiction-writing processes. In addition to their own written responses to reading, students work individually and in small groups researching the reading and writing processes behind selected novels (mainstream and alternative), ranging from the beginnings of the form to the present day. Drawing upon authors’ journals, notebooks, letters, and more public writings, students explore the writing processes of well-known writers and ways in which students’ own responses to reading can nourish and heighten the development of their fiction. Course will survey many of the principal novelists and novels and the development of the genre from its roots to contemporary fiction. Students should be writing fiction, but novel-length material is not required.
4 Credits
Requisites COREQUISITES: 55-4104 Prose Forms
55-4219 CRW: American Latino Writers
Course is a research, writing, and discussion workshop devoted to examining the development of story ideas by selected American Latino writers, including these writers’ responses to reading, stages of manuscript development, approaches to rewriting, dealings with editors and publishers, and other aspects of the fiction writer’s process. Throughout the course, students read private writings (journals, notebooks, letters) as well as more public statements by published writers such as Julia Alvarez, Isabel Allende, Junot Diaz, and Rudolfo Anaya, with an eye toward their own reading and writing processes. In particular, students reflect upon the way in which the writer’s often very personal response to texts differs from that of the traditional literary critic’s approach of focusing on the end product.
4 Credits
PL
Requisites COREQUISITES: 55-1101 Fiction Writing I or 55-4101 Fiction Writing I
55-4220 CRW: Experimental Theatre
This course explores dramatic work outside the traditional linear narrative of the Western canon, including avante-garde, dada, surrealism, existentialism, and absurdism. Students will research authors such as Jarry, Artaud, Genet, Stein, and Beckett, and will give oral presentations on a writer’s process with creative essays, as well as complete writing assignments that incorporate nonlinear techniques into their own dramatic work.
4 Credits
Requisites COREQUISITES: 55-1101 Fiction Writing I or 55-4101 Fiction Writing I
55-4221 CRW: Crime and Story
Course explores the fact that, since Oedipus Rex, the crime has been one of the engines that drive story movement. Dostoevsky, Drieser, Petry, Dickens, Atwood, and Wright are among the many writers who use elements of the mystery and crime story to explore the psychological effects of crime on characters in fiction. By analyzing the writing techniques and processes–such as point of view, scene, voice, and story structure–of well-known writers, students will examine how murder, crime, and mystery have been transformed beyond genre to create dramatic literary fiction. By reading published work, as well as researching memoirs, journals, essays, and letters of established writers, students will explore how they may use these techniques to create compelling movement in their fiction.
4 Credits
Requisites COREQUISITES: 55-1101 Fiction Writing I or 55-4101 Fiction Writing I
55-4300 Story in Graphic Forms
Course covers writing for comics and graphic novels: Forms and formats similar to but unique from those of narrative prose, screenwriting, and storyboarding. The full script and plot outline styles of major publishers are explored and practiced. There’s an emphasis on research to enable the writer to translate the envisioned image into words for artist and audience. Business aspects such as submissions, working within publishing cooperatives, and self-publishing are presented.
4 Credits
Requisites COREQUISITES: 55-1101 Fiction Writing I or 55-4101 Fiction Writing I
55-4301 Young Adult Fiction
Course analyzes a selection of published young adult novels, with emphasis on the development of student works, including exploration of ideas and issues that sustain novel-length material. Also studied are plot construction, writing of scene and transition, and the weaving of theme into the whole.
4 Credits
Requisites COREQUISITES: 55-1101 Fiction Writing I or 55-4101 Fiction Writing I
55-4302 Story and Script: Fiction Techniques for the Media
Course adapts prose fiction to script form, attending to the variety of ways in which imaginative prose fiction techniques (image, scene, dialogue, summary narrative, point of view, sense of address, movement, plot and structure, and fiction material) are developed in script and applications to arts and communication fields such as advertising, scriptwriting for film, television, video, and radio. Course relates creative problem solving in prose fiction to media constraints, situations, and challenges.
4 Credits
Requisites COREQUISITES: 55-1101 Fiction Writing I
55-4303 Dreams and Fiction Writing
Course helps writers relate the rich, various, and powerful world of dreams to the needs and delights of imaginative prose fiction. Students keep journals of their dreams, read and write dream stories, and study how dreams relate to their fiction writing, including researching the ways in which dreams have influenced the work of well-known writers.
4 Credits
Requisites COREQUISITES: 55-1101 Fiction Writing I or 55-4101 Fiction Writing I
55-4303PR Dreams and Fiction Writing
Course helps writers relate the rich, various, and powerful world of dreams to the needs and delights of imaginative prose fiction. Students keep journals of their dreams, read and write dream stories, and study how dreams relate to their fiction writing, including researching the ways in which dreams have influenced the work of well-known writers.
4 Credits
Requisites COREQUISITES: 55-1101 Fiction Writing I or 55-4101 Fiction Writing I
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
55-4412J Topics in Writing Abroad: Rome
This J-Session course offers a ten-day immersion in Rome’s literature, art, history, and culture. Students read fiction and nonfiction by noted authors; visit major sites-the Colosseum, Vatican, Roman Forum, etc.-as well as museums and places associated with noted authors; participate in writing workshops at Lorenzo de’ Medici; and write journal entries and reading responses leading to an extended story, essay, or digital project, which may be done in collaboration with students from the AEMM and Fashion Studies Departments.
3 Credits
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
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
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