ENG 227 - Intro to Creative Writing - Spring 2014

Creative writing features a tremendous variety of approaches and techniques.  For ENG 227, we'll be examining how to seek out new approaches applicable to our writing goals, and understand the successful writing habits to help us realize these goals, and then effectively present our work to interested audiences.

Major topics for this course include Poetry, Fiction, Life Writing, and Cultural-Historical Activity Theory.

Course Policies - Schedule - Contact Ryan

Revision and Unity: Crafting Your Long Story

The idea of "unity" is rather nebulous in fiction.  It can refer to unity of time and place (as in all the events occur in the same scene), or to unity of theme (the story has a tightly-focused symbolism), or to unity of character (the protagonist is developed and consistent).  By examining the focus of your story, you can develop and sharpen the implied meaning of the work as a whole.

<--Week 5 - Week 6 - Week 7--> 
Unity - Dialogue

Fiction Workshops: The Fifty-Point Scale

Here's the 50-pt scale I use for your fiction workshops.  Before worrying too much about the numbers, make sure to read How I Use the Scale.

Course Grading - Grading Workshop Writing
50-Point Scale - Fiction - Poetry

Writing Conflict: Freytag's Pyramid and the Shape of Narrative

In discussing Freytag's Pyramid, so far we've only touched on the basic structure of the story.  In this lesson, we address how each individual components of the story contributes to the development and eventual resolution of the story's central conflict.

<--Week 1 - Week 2 - Week 3-->

Narrative - Conflict - Scenes

Plot Diagrams: Emotion and Causality in Narrative

One of our main authorial decisions in writing is where and when to "start" a story.  Building tension requires us to choose a starting point which is close enough to the conflict to hold the reader's interest, and yet still distant enough from the climax that the story can be be driven continuously forward.

Week 1 - Week 2-->

Welcome - Perspective in Narrative - Plot Diagrams

Narrative - The Perspective Behind Stories

Narrative is a carefully defined term with many applications.  At it's core, narrative is about telling a story - and mastering this art is essential for success in fiction.

Week 1 - Week 2-->

Welcome - Perspective in Narrative - Plot Diagrams

Character in Anticipation - Building Tension and Conflict

 

1-2-Writing Workshops Online

Writing the Whole Story - Ten Pages of Fiction

Yes, it is the longest single assignment for the course.  But that's okay.  During the course of the semester, you've each written a variety of stories and poems and essays.  And this will serve you well.  You've picked up several important skills in writing style and content.  Whether you choose to expand a piece you've already submitted or instead decide to start from scratch, you have the tools to write a good story.

Radical Revision - Expanding Your Fiction

Radical Revision is one of the quickest ways to jump-start a story which may be hard to write.  One reason we assign this exercise is because it encourages you to view your work from multiple angles, and this in turn will give you more ways to approach writing in the future.  I've adapted this exercise to help overcome a common issue that writers face: insufficient detail.

Writing the Symbol Sketch - Allegory, Fable, and Post-Modernism

Writing a fiction piece with symbols can be a unique challenge.  It forces us to bring together the kind of symbolic imagery expected from poetry with the focus on character demanded by fiction.  The strength of this comes in the ability to convey a lesson to your audience through allegory or even the post-modern fable - the trick is to avoid the trap of coming on so strong that the reader feels manipulated...

Use Specific Details in Your Writing

As you write - particularly as you approach the Symbol section of Introduction to Fiction and Poetry, the details in your piece will play a key role in holding the reader's interest.  You can follow the link to Learn More about using Specificity of Detail to Enhance the Tone and Interest in Your Stories.

1-2-Writing Workshops Online

Writing the Setting Fiction Sketch

Setting.  It's the easiest aspect of fiction to identify.  The author describes a landscape or an object, and it's setting.  Deciding the importance of that setting to the story is somewhat more complicated, but it's an important consideration as you write your own fiction.

Writing Tone

A friend of mine e-mailed today asking about how to teach tone to her students.  And this is a very important question for any writer.  In your stories, physical descriptions, actions, and character details will carry the reader only so far.  Besides understanding and "seeing" the story, the reader needs to feel the story.  This is where tone comes in.

Writing the Voice Sketch

In my experience, one of the most difficult parts of writing a voice piece is finding a way to capture a unique voice without exaggerating that voice to the point of disbelief.  And the two pieces we read for class cut a very fine line here, managing to capture some of the extremes of local dialects without inflicting a cliche.

Links to Literary Terms

I had a very good question today about how to know which terms to identify.  Given the snow, we haven't gone over as many of the literary terms and techniques as I would have liked, so I've included a list here of useful websites for literary terms.  As the semester progresses, I will focus in on the literary terms which I find the most important, but you may discover that additional terms are needed to describe the works from The Hopkins Review.