First-Year Studies in Fiction

This class is designed to help students travel far in fiction writing by trying a wide range of approaches. We’ll spend time each week discussing stories by a range of authors, and regular writing assignments will be linked to these models. We’ll look at the elements of fiction—setting, character, time, plot, point of view—as well as less usual categories. As students begin to present their own work in class, we’ll see how forms emerge and how beginnings can develop into shaped pieces. In conference, we’ll talk about which assignments have triggered the strongest possibilities, and students will begin to write longer, more complicated pieces and to grow their own notions of story.