Department of English

This is a workshop in which students will be required to write forty pages of fiction--short stories or part of a novel or novella--and submit at least one story or chapter for publication. Through first drafts and much rewriting, students will learn techniques for plotting; getting to know characters and coaxing them to reveal themselves dramatically, efficiently; creating dialogue and settings; and avoiding common errors. Through discussion of each others' work, students will help one another learn better how to accomplish the two very different tasks of serious fiction writers: relaxing, falling, diving into, exploring, eavesdropping on an imagined world to create a story, and then analyzing, cutting, fixing, and revising that story so that self-expression grows into art.