SUMMER SESSION

View Course

ENGLISH 307-0 : Advanced Creative Writing: Reading & Writing the Novella

Description

How might a long story or novella differ in structure and ambition from a shorter work? What is the nature of material that requires the relative expansiveness of a longer form, but not the breadth of a novel?

In this class, students will plan and draft a long story or short novella of about 35–50 pages. Throughout the quarter, students will read and discuss published models as points of departure for developing the form and substance of their own long work in installments. Portions of student work in progress will be workshopped—long stories, short novels, standard novellas, story cycles, and tales will be considered.

Novella proposals, readings, and drafting will be due in the first class. Be prepared to do a lot of writing, and to turn in work in every class. Many writing students have different agendas for the work, and this course would accommodate the widest variety of projects, as long as all students understand that the work for the course has to do with “writing longer”. Novel projects, story cycles, long poems, essay suites, memoir, or, as can be seen in the readings, a “nonfiction novella”.

We will also look at a passage from a masterful long poem and discuss lyricism and narrative in both prose and how to grow a long work, brick by brick.

Objectives: To gain a deeper understanding of the structural foundations of a longer work; to become a more discerning reader of fiction with a keener grasp of how elements can be manipulated to produce particular effects; to broaden your sense of what kinds of material can be brought into a work; and to establish a more rigorous discipline for the writing of literary art.