English 615-001
Advanced Fiction Writing
Instr: Roberts, Sheila
Office: CRT 597; 229-4534
e-mail: svrob@uwm.edu
Office hours: TBA
Course Information: TR; 3:30-4:45pm; CRT 286
Course Description
In this course students will be working on their own short fiction, novellas, or sections of novels. Workshop time will be shared equally among all students, and all students are obliged to read work that is circulated for each following session. In between workshopping stories, we will also read four slender volumes of short fiction and take turns in critiquing the stories. Techniques we will pay attention to are, among others: How to begin a story so that the reader is immediately engaged, and understands or can guess what the story will deal with; how to write well-paced, individualized dialogue, while avoiding any confusion as to who is speaking; how to search for vivid metaphors when depicting settings, characters and their inner lives; how to move towards an effective conclusion (which may or may not be the climax of the story).
Each student will be asked to submit four revised and completed stories for grading, or a novella, or chapters from a novel.
Required Reading:
Animal Crackers by Hanna Tinti
The Death of the Beekeeper by Lars Gustafsson
Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino
Flash Fiction Forward, eds. Thomas and Shapard
Grades:
Four short stories or equivalent pages of a novella or novel, 60%
One in-class critique of a published story, 10%
Attendance and class-participation (which means that students will have read and commented on the work circulated by all those in the class, 30%
Religious Holidays will be respected.
Incompletes will be granted under exceptional circumstances.
