Technical Seminars

What is the nature of the encounter between a narrator and a character, and how do elements of character and plot play out in narrative points of view? Drawing on the narratological work of theorists such as Gérard Genette and Monika Fludernik and of critics such as James Wood, this technical seminar considers questions of point of view, perspective, and focalization. Readings may include stories by Jamil Jan Kochai, Lorrie Moore, Jamaica Kincaid, William Faulkner, Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette, and Edith Wharton, among others, and will introduce instances of first-person-plural and second-person narrative, as well as modes of representing speech and thought such as free indirect discourse. Over the course of the quarter, students will write short analyses and creative exercises, culminating in a final project.

Tuesday 12:30pm-3:20pm

T. S. Eliot once said that “good writers borrow, great writers steal.” In this class we will look at modeling as a springboard for original creativity. What makes a piece of writing original? Is it possible to borrow a famous writer’s story structure, theme, or even attempt their voice, yet produce something wholly original? How specifically are writers influenced and then inspired? Readings will pair writers with the influences they’ve talked or written about, such as Yiyun Li and Anton Chekhov; Edward P. Jones and Alice Walker; Sigrid Nunez and Elizabeth Hardwick, and George Saunders and Nikolai Gogol. Writing exercises will experiment with aspects of voice, narrative structure, point of view, tone, and use of dialog. While this is not a workshop course, come prepared to write and share work in class. Students will pursue both creative work and critical papers.

It’s long been said that there are no new stories, only new ways of telling old ones, but how do writers reengage familiar genres, plots, and themes without being redundant? This course will confront the literary cliché at all levels, from the trappings of genre to predictable turns of plot to the subtly undermining forces of mundane language. We will consider not only how stories can fall victim to cliché but also how they may benefit from calling on recognizable content for the sake of efficiency, familiarity, or homage. Through an array of readings that represent unique concepts´ and styles as well as more conventional narratives we will examine how published writers embrace or subvert cliché through story craft. Meanwhile, student fiction will be discussed throughout the term in a supportive workshop atmosphere that will aim not to expose clichés in peer work, but to consider how an author can find balance—between the familiar and the unfamiliar, between the predictable and the unpredictable—in order to maximize a story’s effect. Students will submit two stories to workshop and will be asked to write critiques of all peer work. 

Essay, derived from the French term essayer, means an attempt. To essay is to try, to experiment, to fail. In this class, we will explore a spectrum of these nonfiction experiments, moving from fractured, lyric, mosaic texts to linear, scene-driven, and found structures. In examining the relationship between content and form, we will parse the ways form itself has narrative agency. Students will analyze how language and image can drive a piece of nonfiction; we will consider the role of white space, silence, absence, and gaps. Our approach will recontextualize scene-driven narrative as an aesthetic choice, not a hallowed tradition. Students will develop a portfolio of reading responses and short creative pieces that explore this vibrant genre which is at once confiding and solitary; free and unfinished. “A good essay seems to question itself in a way that a novel or short story does not – or perhaps it is simply that an essay leaves the questions on the page, there for everyone to see; it is a forum for self-doubt, for an attempt whose outcome isn’t assured.” Students will leave this class with a strong grasp of the essay tradition and how to bring – and leave – their own questions around the form. Readings will include Terese Marie Mailhot, Carmen Maria Machado, Mark Spragg and others.

In her seminal essay “On Being Ill,” Virginia Woolf writes, “Literature does its best to maintain that its concern is with the mind; that the body is a sheet of plain glass through which the soul looks straight and clear. [...] On the contrary, the very opposite is true. All day, all night the body intervenes.” This seminar will actively examine these bodily interventions in writing, and explore the merits of engaging deeply and precisely with the taboo subjects of sex, aging, illness, bodily change, and bodily difference. We will also discuss the concept of embodied writing—and the embodiment of physical experience through writing —using the body-centered prose of Bruno Schulz, Annie Ernaux, Rebecca Brown, Yasunari Kawabata, Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore, and other writers. Assignments will include short critical and creative responses, a final fiction assignment, and a final presentation.

Rightly dismissed, sometimes, as the home of costume dramas and simplistic crowd-pleasers, historical fiction was once the forge of European realism, honing priorities of detail, scene, and character development that could bring the bare historical record to life.  Today, some historical fiction remains a site of pressing experiment, and in this seminar we’ll read such work to unlock the arguments of craft that spur fiction to distinguish itself from non-fiction in ways that still feel fresh.  Analytical and creative responses will follow readings in historical magical realism (Alejo Carpentier, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, or Toni Morrison), counterfactual historical fiction (John Keene or Laurent Binet), imagined biography (Fleur Jaeggy, Marcel Schwob, or Virginia Woolf), and in scholarship that itself borrows the tools of fiction (John Demos or Saidiya Hartman).  Along the way we’ll discuss illuminating critical polemics, and at the quarter’s end students will prepare an essay or experiment that uses historiography to throw the techniques of fiction into a new light

Writing fiction is in large part a matter of convincing world-building, no matter what genre you write in. And convincing world-building is about creating a seamless reality within the elements of that world: from character dynamics, to setting, to social systems, and even the story or novel’s conceptual conceit. And whether it be within a genre of realism, historical fiction, or science fiction, building a convincing world takes a good deal of research. So while we look closely at the tools and methods of successful world-building, we will also dig into the process of research. From how and where to mine the right details, to what to look for. We will also focus on how research can make a fertile ground for harvesting ideas and even story. Students will read various works of long and short fiction with an eye to its world-building, as well as critical and craft texts. They will write short weekly reading responses and some creative exercises as well. Each student will also be expected to make a brief presentation and turn in a final paper for the class. The class will also be linked with the History Department’s ExoTerra Imagination Lab.

The art of nonfiction is sometimes described as the art of leaving things out, and nowhere is this more pronounced and problematic than in capturing character. The way you characterize people, places, and things ultimately says as much about you, the author, as it does about what you’re characterizing, and the goal of this class is to teach you to do so economically yet accurately, or at least fairly. Not reductively. We’ll start with the surface: with the eccentricities, tics, and quirks that make someone who they are, or appear to be. How to capture these oddities without sliding into caricature? Writers often default to physical description, but we’ll devote as much or more effort to the verbal, i.e., to exercises in dialogue, whose true power is not to convey information but character. We’ll also practice writing in body language, which is equally revealing of mien, demeanor, and underlying motivation. Beneath it all lies what we call ‘true character’: the values, morals, and ideals evident in deeds, facts, and what we might call properties, the essential characteristics of a culture, city, or place. Our weekly reading and writing assignments and exercises will culminate in a creative portfolio and a final essay, as well as the skills you’ll need to take workshops.

This reading and writing course will acquaint students with one of the essential tools of fiction writers, characterization. We will read works by authors including Baldwin, Guo, Nabokov, Munro, Sharma and Wharton, toward exploring how some of literatures most famous characters are rendered. How do writers of fiction create contexts in which characters must struggle, and how does each character's conflicts, choices, and use of language reveal his or her nature? How do we make characters whose behaviors are complicated enough to feel real, and why are some of the worst characters the most compelling? Students in this technical seminar will complete both creative and analytical writing exercises, reading responses, and a critical paper that focuses on characterization in a work of fiction.

What must an ending do? Tragic endings define the story that comes before; epiphany transcends it. Some endings hardly matter at all—and that's okay. Why do different stories demand different endings and how should we conceive of endings as we write towards them? Our own stories go unfinished when we don't know how to end them—but what exactly is the nature of that failure? Is the story like an equation that the ending has to solve? Or might the tyranny of the perfect ending invite us to reconsider the nature of storytelling? In this technical seminar we'll study fictions that end triumphantly (Austin), damningly (James), surprisingly (detective novels), and not at all (as in Kafka's unfinished novels). We'll weigh the problems and politics of endings—the unexamined need for closure, the too-easy sacrifice of the heroine—and consider critical views from Aristotle, Benjamin, and Shklovsky. Creative exercises, such as writing new endings for set texts, will complement weekly critical responses and—in the end—a final paper.