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Become comfortable with the craft elements fundamental to creative writing, including imagery, voice, character, scene, summary and setting, and learn to apply these craft elements in the fiction, poetry and creative nonfiction genres. Through weekly readings and discussions, you learn and develop skills and techniques to help you pinpoint what makes a piece of writing memorable. You’ll use what you learn to discuss your classmates’ writing critically and thoughtfully and to revise your own writing. Enrollment is limited.
Course Outline
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Course Objectives
- Identify, analyze and apply key craft elements in works of fiction, creative nonfiction and poetry
- Familiarize yourself with elements of the various crafts and a variety of concepts used in critiquing and understanding creative texts
- Look for patterns with an eye to what makes a piece of writing effective and compelling
- Write and discuss your own writing critically and thoughtfully
- Contribute to deliberate and successful habits in revision
- Complete a portfolio of work: one to two poems, one story and one sample of creative nonfiction
- Make deliberate decisions about how to shape specific elements in your own creative writing
- Develop your unique voice through the use of craft Identify traditional genre definitions and explore how genre boundaries may be blurred
- Read closely and write carefully for craft—word by word, and passage by passage
- Identify both strengths and opportunities for development in your classmates' writing by posing questions rather than making declarations of judgment
- Maintain a daily writing practice in a writing journal
- Develop and implement goals to effectively revise your work
What You Learn
- Imagery
- Voice and point of view
- Character
- Plot and conflict
- Scene, summary and story
- Setting and tone
- Narrative arc
- Genres and forms
- Poems, prose poems and lyrics
- Truth in creative nonfiction: essays and memoirs
- Revision
- Workshop of final portfolios
- Moving forward as a writer
How You Learn
- Reading assignments
- Craft assignments
- Writing assignments, which may include poems, short stories and creative nonfiction
- Discussion participation and assignments
- Classmate critiques and peer reviews
- Writing journal
- In-class exercises
- Essay (online section)
- Final portfolio