syllabus for ltwr 8a sp 2011 – intro to fiction

LTWR 8A: INTRODUCTION TO FICTION – Spring 2011

Professor: Anna Joy Springer Lecture: 7:00 – 8:20 PMEmail: [email protected] Room: Center Hall 113

Office: Literature Building # 438 TAs: Office Hours: Wednesday 1 – 4 PM, and by appointment

Sections: B01 Day: M Time: 12:00p - 12:50p Room: PCYNH 120 Amy Forrest

B02 Day: W Time: 09:00a - 09:50a Room: HSS 2154 Jennifer Ritenour

B03 Day: F Time: 11:00a - 11:50a Room: PCYNH 120 Amy Forrest

COURSE DESCRIPTIONThis course introduces many of the basic elements of contemporary fiction, including characterization, style, point-of-view, dialogue, theme, and narrative structure. Emphasis will be placed upon writing first from your most unfettered imagination, AND upon sculpting these wild writings into shapely short stories through a variety of creative revision techniques.

Each week we will read both conventional and innovative short stories published (mostly) in the last thirty years, in order to discuss in context the fiction-writing techniques you’ll be practicing in your own writing. We will read 2-3 short stories a week.

To explore craft and experimentation, there will be a number of brief writing exercises, both in and outside of class, which will help to generate a final short story as the quarter progresses. You will turn in a polished 2-page story every week for group discussion.

Therefore, there is a LOT of writing and reading for this course, which is a requirement for declaring a LitWriting Major and working in upper division fiction and prose classes.

Writing exercises and drafts will be reviewed in small groups led by undergraduate workshop leaders in order to facilitate your creative revision, revision, and revision process.

COURSE TEXT

LTWR 8A – Introduction to Writing FictionSpring 2011, Professor Springer

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https://www-act.ucsd.edu/cgi-bin/blink.pl/9/faculty/codes/bldg_codes.html



Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft (8th Ed.) by Janet Burroway and Elizabeth & Ned Stuckey-French, plus an additional [COURSE READER available at Cal Copy.]

COURSE REQUIREMENTSAttendance and Participation – no computers, ipads, smart phones on during lecture.Attendance is expected, and more than three absences will affect your grade. Please do not use a computer, ipad, smart phone or any other device that allows you to check email, look at Facebook, etc., during lecture, as actual participation is required and it’s distracting for me and your classmates. You will sign in for lecture, and your TA and workshop leader (tutor) will keep record of absences. Participation is based on the energy and thought with which you contribute to discussions in lecture, section, and your small workshop groups.

Course WebsiteOur course will have a site at WebCT, located at: http://webct.ucsd.edu. You must have a sign-in name and password to access the course site. I will give detailed assignments for the week there. You will also be able to ask me and each other questions on the site, and to chat. I may upload lecture notes and other materials there. Please make sure to check the site a couple times each week to know what your assignments are, and whether there are any updates.

Weekly Story PromptsEach week you will also write a more carefully crafted and revised work of fiction (2-3 pps., double-spaced, 12pt font), based on a prompt I give you. Sometimes I will give more than one prompt, and you can pick one to respond to.

This is the piece you will turn in to your TA for credit every week, while you will have your story workshopped every other week.

Workshopping in Small GroupsYou will hand your story out to all the members of your small group at the end of class on Wednesday, for workshopping on the following Wednesday. Each small workshop group will split in half, Group A and Group B.

In order to discuss each story really deeply, only half of the small workshop group will have their work discussed on Wednesdays, about 5-6 people a week.

Group A will be up first, then group B the following Wednesday. Workshop leaders will meet with small groups to discuss these LTWR 8A – Introduction to Writing FictionSpring 2011, Professor Springer

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exercises, and will also provide written feedback and a check, check plus, or check minus (or 0 if the story doesn’t come in) to both the student and their TA.

In small groups, we will employ two very different methods to discuss student writings: For the shorter weekly exercises we will discuss the writings as if they were already-published works of literature (like you would talk about a short story in a Literature class) without giving any editorial advice. This does not mean you have to be fake and sweet and say “I like it.” Your opinion doesn’t come into play in this process. Your advice is not needed. What is needed is your analysis of the piece based on the kind of language it uses to dramatize scenes and ideas. This practice is meant to teach students how to read like writers, rather than as passive readers or as editors. You will learn to understand how different techniques work to create meaning in a work of fiction, and reading other students’ work like this will help you learn how to see your own early drafts with new eyes that allow you to step back and analyze your own writing, and then to see what you need to do in revision to make the writing stronger, tighter, and more energetic for a reader. The meaning the work creates may (WILL) be different for everyone in your group, and that’s fine – that’s what generates a good discussion, which is what great literature does. It is important that you become clear that what you are learning here is how to begin creating literature.

Later in the quarter, we will engage in the more common advice-giving “workshop” model.

How many copies to make:If you are in the half of the group who is up for workshopping, you’ll need to make enough copies of your work for every member of your group, plus your tutor, plus your TA.

On days your work is not up for workshopping, you will only need to bring one copy for your TA.

Students are responsible for making copies of their prompts AND STAPLING THEM; please bring enough copies for Small Group Members, Workshop Leader, and your TA on the Wednesday before you are up for review.

***ASSIGNMENTS WILL NOT BE CONSIDERED COMPLETE UNLESS YOU STAPLE THEM AND HAND OUT ALL COPIES on the correct Wednesday***

Final Short Story PackageLTWR 8A – Introduction to Writing FictionSpring 2011, Professor Springer

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You may begin working on a longer short story sometime near the 7th

week of the quarter, and I encourage you to use your warm-up exercises and prompts to help you generate the story. In its final version, it should be 7 to 10 pages long. The first draft will be discussed in your small workshop groups during Weeks Nine and Ten; you may seek further feedback from your TA and me, during our office hours. The final draft will be due at the time of the final exam. With it, in a folder, you should include all Peer Review Letters and your earlier draft with your TA’s (or my) comments on it.

***YOU MAY NOT TURN IN UNFINISHED (“TO BE CONTINUED”) STORY DRAFTS OR EXERCISES – THE STORY HAS TO HAVE A BEGINNING, MIDDLE, AND END because everything has to be there in order for people to discuss the piece as a whole in workshop. It’s simply impossible to have a discussion of a story that has no ending yet, or a missing middle. Unfinished stories will not receive written responses or be discussed in workshop and they will receive a check-minus. So write those last few closing lines even if you plan on changing them later.

Peer Review LettersEach week half of the members of your small group will have their work read and discussed. You will be responsible for reading all of the stories up for review each week (probably 5 or 6 of them), and then writing review letters for TWO of them. Your Workshop Leader will tell you which TWO STORIES you are responsible for. These letters should be addressed to the author and should be typed, then signed. They should be about 2/3 of a page long. On stories you are not writing a peer review letter for, you will annotate (reading notes as you read) the draft and write a short note at the end of the manuscript. I will give you further guidelines on how to read the work deeply and to write these review letters. When we begin discussing each other’s short stories near the end of the course, you will write a peer review letter for ALL of your group members’ drafts.

New Writing Series (Lab)You are required to attend three readings of your choice during the quarter, and to write a 1-page response to each in your journal. Two of the readings must be part of the New Writing Series, which is normally held on Wednesdays at 4:30 in the Visual Arts Facility Performance Space.

Schedule of readings4/13/2011 Davis Schneiderman 4/20/2011 Myung Mi Kim4/27/2011 Heriberto Ypez & Jerome RothenbergLTWR 8A – Introduction to Writing FictionSpring 2011, Professor Springer

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5/4/2011 John Keene and Chris Stackhouse5/11/2011 MFA first years5/18/2011 MFA second years5/25/2011 MFA second years6/01/2011 Tara Jane O'Neil, Rachel Carns, and Anna Joy Springer

You may also attend one off-campus reading. Label it “Response to NWS Reading (#1, #2, or #3),” and include the author’s name, so your workshop leader is sure to give you credit for it. When writing the response, think about what struck you most about the reading in terms of what we’ve studied so far in class: what provoked you in terms of character, structure, rhythm, energy, specific detail, etc.? Please quote from the reading to support your claims. What questions arose for you? What ideas did the reading give you for your own work? etc. I’ll be looking for originality and description in your responses, not a summary of what was read and not a basic opinion.

Midterm & Final ExamThe midterm will ask you to show your proficiency with literary terms discussed in lecture, section, and in the textbook in multiple-choice, short answer and essay form. The final exam will be a one essay question about your own final story in relation to the techniques you’ve learned in class.

OTHER IMPORTANT INFORMATION

Manuscript Presentation

Very Important: All manuscripts must be typed (in a reader-friendly 12-point font) and double-spaced; pages must be numbered and stapled. Please do not hand in work that is not stapled.

All exercises handed in must have a title, and the title should not be the name I’ve given the assignment. You should put the name of the prompt and its due date near your own name at the top left hand side of the page. The title of your piece should be centered, just above the writing. Please also title your stories with a title that’s different from the name of the assignment.

Labeling work: At top left corner of page

[your name] [your TA’s name]LTWR 8A – Introduction to Writing FictionSpring 2011, Professor Springer

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[due date][my name of assignment][your tutor’s name + also whether you’re in Group A or Group B]

This will allow us to enter it into the grade book correctly.

EmailPlease email me with correspondence only. I will not read assignments sent by email, but you can bring work to my office for me to read and discuss with you.

Grading25% Tests: 5% reading quizzes; 10% Midterm; 10% Final Exam

25% Community: 9% Letters; 8% Attendance & Participation in Lectures and Section; 8% Workshop Participation. Attendance is mandatory in Lectures, Workshops, and in Sections. You will score high points for being prepared (having done all of the reading and taken notes of insights, disagreements, and questions) and participating in discussion in Section, and for the depth, insightfulness, and generosity of your workshop feedback and peer review letters

25% Writing Exercises: 15% weekly stories from my prompts, 10% Writing Journal and New Writing Series Responses

20% Final Short Story Package: 10% Revised Final Short Story (with evidence of significant revision from first draft); 10% Rest of the Package, including first draft with comments from TA, plus all letters from workshop group and workshop leader. (You will include your final exam into this package).

Week 1 - “The Only Story Allowed; or Why Write Fiction?”

Monday 3/28 – Introduce course. Explain rules of Section ie., It starts on Monday, and if not there on the first day you give up your seat. Tutors talk about their own writing. Students get into small groups with tutors. Group exchanges email addresses and names. Tutors divide small groups into A and B for workshopping. Tutors to send me copy of names, Group A or B, and email addresses of small group members.

Homework in preparation for next class.


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-Reading: Chapter One “Whatever Works: The Writing Process” in Writing Fiction. Read also “Catskin” by Kelly Link on WebCT

-Mandatory Warm Up Exercise for Writing Journal to bring to class Wednesday: “The Only Story Allowed” – Pretend you are only allowed to write one short story before you die – maybe you are in prison, about to be executed, or maybe some other horrible thing is about to happen to you. Really, imagine this is the last piece of writing you will ever get to do.

Answer each of these questions in writing in your journal - Why do you write it? What’s it about? What’s in it? Who is it for? Do events happen, or is it more of a sketch or series of impressions? Are there characters? What kinds? Are there philosophical themes? Describe them. Why are you writing a fictional story rather than poetry or nonfiction? How does your story fit in with the history of mainstream and resistance literatures that you’ve read – or is it totally new? How? Why? What sort of language does your story use? Why? Are there political reasons for telling your story? Or spiritual ones? Or will the story help YOU figure something out, or test some idea? Is the story experimental or conventional – and if so, by whose conventions? Why? How will the specific kinds of language you use accomplish these goals? Now, Write the last sentence of this story.

This exercise should get at the heart of why you write (or want to write). Try not to chicken out by going for something easy like “I want to entertain people with a funny story about interesting characters”. Writers have to summon a lot of courage, because writing fiction is about staging and helping guide a reader through complex truths that can only be developed in narrative form. Read last sentences from “the only story allowed”

Wednesday 3/30 Lecture on story generation (freewriting vs. planned writing) and revision (complete seeing anew vs. editing). Discussion of Editorial Workshopping vs. Project Attention. Last 30 mins: Move to small groups & introduce each other by reading aloud The Only Story Allowed answers to questions from writing journal.

Homework-Reading: Chapter Two “Seeing is Believing: Showing and Telling” in WF, including “We Didn’t” by Stuart Dybeck, plus “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas” by Ursula LeGuin (WebCT)


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And for section please read Chapters 1-3 of The Eye of Argon at http://www.ansible.co.uk/misc/eyeargon.html.).

-Journal Warm Up Exercises: In textbook, pick two of the following Chapter 2 Writing Exercises to warm up with: 2, 3, 7. Label your exercises in your Writing Journal so your tutor can easily see which ones you chose to do.

-Writing due Monday – 4-5 Pages - Story Prompt is “The Secret Scar.” After you’ve done this week’s readings and exercise, write a story about a kind of scar that only one character knows about and can expose. One other character would be very upset if the “scar” were exposed. The story should dramatize a moment of struggle between these two characters though it might not be an obvious struggle that anyone would understand. The scar can be a physical scar that no one knows about or talks about, or it can be a metaphorical one, on a body, a psyche, a culture, or on the landscape. The scar could be in a strange shape, mysterious but compelling. Or it could be a scar on a family, or a scar on history. The story may enact the scar’s origins or a character’s relationship to it. What is a “scar,” (figuratively) for the purposes of this piece? Is the language of the story also somehow “scarred”? How do you write in scarred language? Try to make your language scarred too, if you like.

The main challenge of this exercise it to write with specific and significant detail and to use very strong sense imagery that is both significant AND relevant to your story. Do not describe things that don’t have much meaning for your story (ie. don’t describe the weather, if the weather doesn’t figure in to the story somehow), and don’t keep any language that isn’t absolutely necessary for the story. Make sure that all details are crisp and bold and that your images force your reader to see things with new eyes, as if for the first time. For specificity, metaphor and other figurative language is great. Be aware if you start writing detail in language you (or your characters) wouldn’t use in everyday speech (like “amongst” or “scantily” or “ever so sweetly”). If you find yourself narrator sounding like a “Writer”, ask yourself if the story needs to be told in this voice, or if one closer to yours would make the writing ring more true.

*Content rules for this exercise: No murders or suicides and no college-campus dramas. If you have to hurt a character, maim them, don’t kill them.

*Focus on: Specificity of detail and details’ relevance to story.


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http://www.ansible.co.uk/misc/eyeargon.html

Section: Introduce selves. Then do exercise on differences between common occurrences in life or in story versus cliché way of describing them. Do a group story with the most clichés exercise.

Week 2 “Vivid Detail That Matters”

Monday April 4 – Class on specific and significant detail and rhythm in “We Didn’t,” and “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas”; Go over Workshop Instructions.

Writing to Turn In on Wednesday (both A and B groups will turn one copy in to small group leader and TA) - Deep Revision of The Secret Scar: Write a new revision, based on “The Scar” with a new compelling title. Revise (not edit) “The Scar” so that it’s only 2 pages, double-spaced. That means you must condense the language. It also means that you will likely start the piece at a different place in the story. Stories often begin on the 3rd page of the first draft, sometimes later. You can usually cut a lot of those first two pages. Cut all detail that’s not relevant to the story, as it flows along and builds. Don’t forget smell and taste. You can use unexpected metaphor (or other figures of speech) for freshness and clarity. Make sure your details are relevant to your story. Go for the unexpected because readers like to be surprised. MAKE SURE THE NAME OF YOUR STORY IS NOT “THE SECRET SCAR,” which would be pretty clichéd at this point, don’t you think?

-Everyone in small group brings one copy of the story to read aloud on April 6 -Group A hands out REVISED “The Scar” to everyone in small group including workshop leader for workshopping on April 13. -Workshop leaders hand in copies of both A & B Groups’ scar story to the appropriate TA. -Workshop leaders make sure all the information listed above in “Labeling Work” is written on the story that goes to the TA before handing it in.

Wednesday April 6 – Small Group – Everyone reads out loud story “The Scar.” People in group pick out two most vivid specific details in story. Quote actual language from the story. Discuss how each of these details appeals to one or more of the senses and why these details are relevant to the story, rather than extraneous.

Homework:Reading: Chapter Three, Building Character, including “Fiesta, 1980” by Junot Diaz in textbook, “The Blue Wallet” by William T. Vollman and “The Bloody Chamber” by Angela Carter on WebCT.


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Reading Quiz: There will be a reading quiz during section on Friday of this week and Monday and Wednesday of next week, so be sure you can identify all the stories you’ve been assigned by style, character, plot summary, and author.

Mandatory Warm Ups:A. Eavesdropping: Write down what you hear strangers say, in their voices. Go to the DMV, the Emergency Room, a bus you normally don’t take (not on campus), a self-help meeting, a church, a wedding, a funeral, a Planned Parenthood waiting room, or some other public place you don’t normally spend a lot of time. The DMV is really a good one, since NOBODY wants to be there, not even the employees. Write down lines of dialogue you hear. Be discreet. Try to use exactly the language the speaker used. Write the opening to a story, starting with one of the lines of dialogue you have overheard.

B. Character Profile: In this same public space, find two or three people who are not like you. Describe what they look like. What are their gestures like. Imagine what words or phrases they use all the time, like, “whatever!” or “Um”. Write those down. Also, answer the following questions about your character: Make up whether they have any repeated gestures (of hand, face, foot, etc.). Under what circumstances do they engage in these gestures – Nervous? Feeling superior? Lying? What is the character’s cultural background? Gender identity? What does the character do for a living? What does the character believe about God.? What was the character’s first sexual experience? Who does your character love? What is the character’s biggest conscious fear? What is the character’s biggest unconscious fear? What is the character hiding? Who does the character wish he or she was more like? Who is the character’s mother? Father? Are they still alive? Married? Come up with 20 questions for EACH character, and answer them. Remember, all these things will contribute to how the character sees the world and therefore, the language the character uses. An astrophysicist will describe a McDonalds’ Playland scuffle differently from a recent immigrant from Kenya interviewing for a job at the McDonalds.

Story Prompts: “Interesting Character” Story

Pick one of the following prompts, and use it as a basis to write a2-page short-short story due next Wednesday: B Group is up for workshop.


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Prompt 1. Rewrite a story you already know, like a fairy tale, fable, myth, pop-culture rumor, or a well-known book or movie plot, but change the story by using the same two or three characters you created in Exercise Two above as its main characters. You may also otherwise alter the plot of the known story however you want to make your piece more original, surprising, or interesting. In fact, if you want, you can combine two well-known stories to create a hybrid third story.

Prompt 2. Pick two of the characters you developed in Warm-Up Exercise 2. Makethem interact, and their interaction will become the basis of a short-short story (2pps, ds). Let them reveal themselves at least as much through action as through dialogue. That is, don’t sit them at a table and have them chat, but instead move them around and have them do things that affect one another. Reveal both of them with equal interestand make both of them equally complex.

You can use one of the following scenarios, or make up your own:* The doctor’s office has messed up and sent (by phone, mail, etc.) each of them theOther one’s medical results and they feel they have to tell the other one.* They are both competing on American Idol, or another game show.* One’s the bad guy who’s really pretty good, and the other’s the good guy who’sreally pretty bad. Put them in a struggle where children are watching.* Put them on a first date at an unusual location.

Prompt 3: Turn one of the characters you created into a very interesting villain. Write in the first person, using this character’s voice, including what they do not say. Don’t work with dialect for the purposes of this exercise, but go ahead and include a quirky speech pattern or a repeated phrase this character may say. Do so sparingly, though! A little “Like, wowzers!” goes a long way and can become distracting. Have this villain tell the story of something they did wrong, but the villain is trying to convince the reader that it wasn’t really a bad thing, or that they had to do it, or that everyone else was really wrong just by the way they tell the story.

Prompt 4: Write a story in first person, in the voices of five characters as they tell thestory of how they all ended up together at the scene of a minor drama or disturbance. At some point some of the characters should speak to other ones. Maybe they recall an incident differently. Use their rendition of what happened to reveal their character’s background, fears, interests, intelligences, weaknesses, etc.LTWR 8A – Introduction to Writing FictionSpring 2011, Professor Springer

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Section F,M,W: Reading quiz will ask you to identify passages from stories, as well as other questions about the stories you have read so far. In-class - do character background sketches.

Week 3 “The Way They Describe Things Says So Much About Them”

Monday April 11 – Lecture on Character Reading: Chapter Four, “The Flesh Made Word” including “Bullet in the Brain” by Tobias Wolff; Read also “Isla” by Susan Steinberg and excerpt from Cane by Jean Toomer (WebCT).

Wednesday April 13 – Group A Workshop of “The Secret Scar” in small groups. Discuss visuals, rhythm, scene. Discuss character in each story, based on direct methods of characterization from this week’s chapter and lecture.Group B hand out “Interesting Character” story for workshop next Wednesday. Tutor hands this piece from both A&B in to TA.

Mandatory Warm Up Exercise in Journal. You have to do these warm up exercises first, before you can write the story that you’re turning in.

Description and Metaphor:

FIRST: Describe TWO of the following places in List A below in detail. Just describe the visual details you see and other sensory details. Don’t draw conclusions. Don’t tell the reader what to believe or know. Just objectively describe what you see, hear, smell, etc.

SECOND: DESCRIBE THE SAME TWO PLACES you just wrote about WITHOUT SAYING WHAT THE PLACE IS, but only what it is like and/or what they remind you of (through use of metaphor, simile, and any other figurative language). Use very specific, detailed imagery describing only what you see/hear/smell/ taste/touch when you imagine these things. Be very careful to not write a metaphor you have read or heard before. Make it completely new.

LIST A - PLACESA broken-down playground – Metaphor Example: “An expanse of giant rusty kitchen utensils half-buried in pockmarked sand.”A gated community that’s trying too hard to be “perfect”An unusual strip clubA small-town zooLTWR 8A – Introduction to Writing FictionSpring 2011, Professor Springer

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A frozen-foods factoryA secret underwater labAn abandoned town in Alaska

NEXT PART OF MANDATORY JOUNRAL WARM UP:Now, pick at least three of the following characters:LIST B - CHARACTERSA coal-minerA junkyard dogA chipped porcelain dollA very old, washed up tyrantA female physicistAn unused musical instrumentA person on the verge of suicide who doesn’t really want to dieA god/goddess (Retired? Over-enthusiastic?)A kaleidoscope An unlikely pervert

Write specific, possibly metaphoric images of the things in LIST A through the eyes of each of these 3 characters. How does each character see/hear/smell/taste/touch the world? What associations do they make? Their world-view, cultures, and interests will inform their vocabulary, cadence, syntax, as well as their opinions and what they are capable of seeing. For instance, a small-town zoo looks different to a female physicist from how it looks to an unlikely pervert. Each of these characters will describe the zoo differently. They will pick up on different details and use a different kind of language.

Prompt for Short Story to Turn in: “Character’s Own Language”Write a short story – One of the characters in list B is the narrator, so the whole story is written in that character’s voice and style of storytelling. That narrator is letting a story unfold about a terrible mistake he or she made earlier in life – the narrator is telling someone who cares about that character and wants to know about the narrator’s past. The mistake should involve two of the characters from list B. The narrator should be located in one place from list A as the narrator tells the story now, but the terrible mistake should take place in another place from list A. For example, I am a goddess telling my grandchildren deities the story of how I banished all the unlikely perverts to Oxnard in my youth, when I thought they should all be under surveillance all the time. I am telling you the story while sitting in a strip club in El Cajon, hiding, because no one will think to find me here, but there are also no unlikely perverts here (because I banished them all to Oxnard). The moment I banished all the perverts, I was at a secret underwater lab with my friend Momo, LTWR 8A – Introduction to Writing FictionSpring 2011, Professor Springer

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a physicist. With the combined power of her scientific skills and my supernatural ones, we were able to locate all the unlikely perverts in the world and transport them to Oxnard. The underwater lab is done all in Ikea-style furniture because Momo is a female physicist with streamlined taste, and I like to describe the Ikea furniture to my grandkids because they have no idea what Ikea furniture looks like.

F,M,W Section: Character writing exercise; continue to discuss character in stories so far.

Week 4 “Who’s Telling Whom, and Why? Point of View & Motive For Telling” WRITING JOURNALS with All Warm Ups and at least 1 Responses to Live Readings Due Wednesday April 20.

Monday April 18 – Professor Springer gone. TA Lecture and exercises on Character – indirect methods, conflict, paradox.

Wednesday April 20 – Small group workshop “Interesting Character” – B GroupsGroup A hands out workshop piece “Character’s Own Language” to small group for workshop next Wednesday.

Section Friday, Monday, Wednesday: Reading quiz – be able to describe all the main characters from each of the stories in detail, plus be ready to give a synopsis of the plot of each story and its title and author name. Then go through 99 ways to Tell a story by Matt Madden and Exercises in Style by Raymond Queneau.

Read Chapter 8 “Call Me Ishmael – Point of View” including “Reply All” by Robin Hemley, “Who’s Irish” by Gish Jen, Then read: “The Babysitter” by Robert Coover (reader)

- Journal Warm Ups – Writing Exercises on p. 338 – Do exercise number 2 with the opening to a story you have turned in for workshop; do exercise number 4 too.

-Prompts for story to turn in “Changing the Lens”:

Revise a former story or warm up in the style of “The Babysitter,” where viewpoint shifts are made obvious by changes in voice (syntax, diction, pacing), but also where multiple simultaneous contradictory events can take place (unlike in real life).

OR: Revise a former story by changing the viewpoint character.


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Create 1-2 tightly constructed pages – eliminate all words that aren’t absolutely vital, including pronouns like “that” and “it”.

***Try not to go too sentimental – remember to create a vivid setting and to let your character be unpredictable and interesting. Focus on important details in “close up”. Create atmosphere by choosing what to describe in a location, but also in what tone to describe it – is the world of the story creepy, friendly, hopeful, complicated, confusing? What specific words do you use to make the world seem to have this atmosphere?

Week 5 “Unique Perspective”

Monday April 25 - Lecture on POV, talk about narrative simultaneity in “The Babysitter”

Wednesday April 27 - Small Groups – Workshop Group A “Character’s Own Language” piece.Group B passes out their “Changing the Lens” story for workshop next Wednesday.

Section – Friday, Wednesday, Monday: Go over point-of-view (tense is unnecessary) in each (or at least some) of the stories read so far.

HomeworkReading: Chapter six “Long Ago,” including “Hominids” by Jill McCorkle, “Mrs. Dutta Writes a Letter” by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni; Read also “New York City in 1979” by Kathy Acker (WebCT).

Writing Journal Warm up: do #3 on page 246.

“Scene/Exposition” Prompt for story to turn in – Write a 2-3 page story in the present tense. Show the character or multiple characters moving (or not moving) moment-by-moment in a specific setting during the last 1 or 2 minutes (only) of “the end of the world” – don’t make it happen all in thought/internal monologue, allow there to be physical action and external action too. It can take place now or in the future.

OR: Do number 6 on page 246 as your story prompt.

***NOTE The below story is DUE Monday not Wednesday:

Week 6 “Location & Atmosphere”


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Monday April 18 –Lecture on Fictional Time and everyone turns in “Scene/Exposition” story to TA.

Wednesday April 20 – Group B Workshops “Changing the Lens” story. Everyone hands out Writing Journals to Small Group Leader Tutors. All exercises must be labeled in a way that’s obvious to the tutor so the tutor can mark down that you have done the assignment.

***Final Story “Pre-Draft” – Take one sitting of three hours undisturbed to freewrite or sketch out the pre-draft of your final short story.

Reading: Chapter five “Far, Far Away” including “Love and Hydrogen” by Jim Shepard and “Wickedness” by Ron Hansen; Read excerpt from Madeleine is Sleeping by Sarah Shun-Lien Bynum (WebCT).

OR: Write a story that takes place in a landscape/location you have read about in another work of fiction. Borrow language from that other work of fiction to describe the setting and create the atmosphere for the new characters and new events of your story. Here’s an example – place characters based on yourself and your girlfriend/boyfriend in the setting of Sarah Bynum’s Madeleine and have one of you break something important. Or put yourself in the shoes of the schoolteacher in “Wickedness” and describe the world through your eyes/voice. See what happens.

For either of the prompt choices, create “atmosphere” by choosing what to describe in a location, but also how to describe it – is the world of the story creepy, friendly, hopeful, complicated, confusing? What specific words do you use to make the world seem to have this atmosphere?

Week 7 Midterm Also: WRITING JOURNALS with All Warm Ups and at least 2

Responses to Live Readings Due Wednesday April 27.

Monday April 25 – Review for Midterm on all readings, writing exercises, and vocabulary terms so far, (for example, Specific Detail, Scene, Character, Reportage, Drafting, and Point of View, among others). This midterm will ask questions that require short answers, multiple choice, and a couple longer answers.

Wednesday April 27 - Midterm on all readings, writing exercises, and vocabulary terms so far. Writing Journals due to tutors at beginning of class – don’t be late!LTWR 8A – Introduction to Writing FictionSpring 2011, Professor Springer

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-Reading Chapter seven “The Tower and the Net: Story Form, Plot, and Structure” (very important) including “What you Pawn I Will Redeem” by Sherman Alexie. Read also “Lull” by Kelly Link (in Reader). Recommended: “Everything That Rises Must Converge” by Flannery O’Connor

First Draft: After you’ve written wild and unknown pre-first draft, make an outline of the scenes and summaries in the order you’ve written them. Decide whether you need to build different scenes and/or summarize at points. Remember scene is a way of slowing down a relatively short amount of time – like a minute or an hour. Summary is a way of speeding up a longer amount of time – like a day, a year, a millennium. Summary gets the reader oriented so he or she will be able to understand what’s happening in the scene, but a story is built of scenes.

Use the checklist for revising scene and summary on page 215 & 216 of your textbook to revise the story for more engaging scenes. Revise your pre-draft, to create your First Full Draft.

First Draft is DUE Monday May 2 - in order for this to count, this first draft must include the entire story arc (beginning, middle, and end), even if it’s rough - no exceptions.

*Content rules for the first draft: No murders, sexual assaults, or suicides, and no college-campus dramas. If you can, steer clear of high-school road-trips and proms, but these are not totally off limits. If you have to hurt a character, maim them, don’t kill them. Or better yet, just scare them. Or accidentally hurt the wrong character.

Long Short story ideas

1. A person is auditioning for a reality TV show or a job with ulterior motives.

2. Write a critical fake autobiography of your generation in its/their voice(s) – you may need to do some historical research

3. The parts of your character’s body are at war or in an argument, and your character doesn’t want anyone to know.

4. Write a story like Kathy Acker’s “New York City, 1979” called (you can change it) “San Diego, 2008” – follow or somehow re-imagine her structure

5. Write a story where the characters are strangers whose lives barely touch, but all circle around one freak incident. Move from one character to the next, making each character vivid and unique and intertwined with all of them somehow.


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6. Begin freewriting, starting with the stupidest or rudest thing you ever heard someone say. Make this character the narrator of his own story – in the first person. Make him be a jerk, but prove through scene that he/she/it has a likable side too.

7. Write in the voice of a very interesting, disillusioned, ugly character who prevails.

8. Write the scariest imaginable story in the scariest style possible about fear itself.

9. There’s a hair/bug/gun in the take-out food and your character is trying to take the food back to the restaurant, but keeps getting stopped.

10. Or, expand a story you have already written for one of the short-short story prompts or journal exercises. You can change it around however you want.

Section: Scene vs. Summary – find in stories we’ve read or in student drafts.

Week 8 “Story Architecture”

Monday May 2 – Lecture on Setting and Atmosphere with Music exercise

Writing to turn in Wednesday - Long Short Story– First Draft Revision Homework: Reorder the structure of your story so that it starts mid-action (in medias res). That could mean starting in the middle high-action scene and flashing back to important moments that built toward this opening scene. It could mean writing the entire story backward in time. It could mean a lot of things. Cut all scenes and summaries that are not vital to engaging the reader with the heart of the story – the moment of profound change and connection/ disconnection. Often the real story starts on about page 3 of your draft, or somewhere very close to the end of the piece. Make the DEEPEST STORY the central hub of your short story – cut anything that distracts, especially unnecessary summary of background information that is implied by characters’ speech, actions, reactions, appearance, etc. – Everyone prepares copies of revised long short story for small group workshop, to hand out on Wed. May 4.

Wednesday May 4 – Lecture and exercise on story structure – Everyone hands in drafts of stories AND writes a letter to EACH writer up for workshop in the next three class sessions. Letters are due on the day a story is up for workshop. Workshop leader to determine whose story is up for workshop on Wednesday May 11 (3-4 people), then Monday May 16 and Wednesday May 18. LTWR 8A – Introduction to Writing FictionSpring 2011, Professor Springer

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HomeworkSection: Discuss specific issues writers are having with long short story – come up with journal practice exercises to deal with problems – try some in class.

Reading – Chapter Eleven, “Play it Again, Sam” including Notes on “Keith” and “Keith”

Week 9 “Workshopping First Drafts of Final Story”

Monday May 9 – Lecture on Story Form, Plot, and Structure continued

Wednesday May 11 – Small Groups – 3-4 people workshop final story. Radical Revision Suggestions.

Homework: Deep Revision on Final Story.

Week 10 “Workshopping Continued” Hand in final Writing Journal to Tutor on Monday May 16.

Extended office hours by appointment to discuss manuscript.

Monday May 16 – Small Groups – B Groups workshop final story Wednesday May 18 – Small Groups – B Groups workshop final storyFinal Story Packet instructions, revision instructions, final exam essay question given.

Finals Week

06/06/2011 Monday 7:00p - 10:00 Location TBA. Final Class Reading and turn in final story packets, including take-home final exam essay.


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syllabus for ltwr 8a sp 2011 – intro to fiction

Documents