CRWR 22152/42152 Advanced Fiction Workshop: Finding and Refining Your Voice
As writers, your "voice" is you imposing who you are on the truthfulness of your sentences. Finding your voice, then, is the process—whether you’re describing a character, an image, or an idea—of constantly asking yourself, Do I absolutely believe this?, of rewriting and rewriting your sentences until you absolutely do believe it, and finally of refining all the technical aspects you brought to bear to assure that level of individual truth. Out of that, naturally and inevitably, comes your voice—at least for the time being. In this workshop, we’ll examine this crucial stage in the development of your own aesthetic, which is not merely a writing style, but more importantly a personal perspective on the world that informs and is informed by that style. We will read a selection of writers with distinctive worldviews and thus distinctive literary voices (Paul Bowles, Toni Morrison, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Lorrie Moore, Ottessa Moshfegh, Ocean Vuong, Garth Greenwell, etc.), and we’ll complement those readings with writing exercises and workshops of your own fiction, where you will actively interrogate, cultivate, and refine your emerging voice.
Tuesday 2:00pm-4:50pm
Instructor consent required. Apply via creativewriting.uchicago.edu. Attendance on the first day is mandatory.