CRWR 191 A-Z - Advanced Topics in Creative Writing

Semester Hours: 3

Current Special Topics

CRWR 191P - Fiction: One Story

This course will focus on creating and building One Story across the semester. Students will submit work four times, each submission an installment of the story. In this way, we will look at beginnings, middles, and endings as we construct narrative momentum, character, setting, voice, dialogue, structure, tension, and other essential aspects of fiction writing. Using student work and published work as the basis for craft discussions, we will delve into the fiction writer’s toolbox to get under the hood of the process. Using the classic workshop setting of reading and critiquing student work in the classroom, we will get our hands dirty with the mechanics of constructing a story. By the end of the semester, each student will have a complete and polished story that has taught them about narrative and the art of making short fiction. Published writers we will explore include Tom-my Orange, Susan Minot, Sally Rooney, Jennifer Egan, George Saunders, and others.

CRWR 191Q - Writing What You See

This classic fiction workshop reinterprets the idea of “writing what you know”, bending the phrase to emphasize what it means to see - be it memory or what is right in front of us. Through seeing and observing the world in a visual and tactile while stories come to life more palpably. Students will be encouraged to use their own stories as the source for their fiction. The goal is to develop a better understanding of narrative voice, character development, setting, scene and other fiction writing techniques, to understanding through close attention the material we are already full of. The acclaimed American fiction writer, John Updike, wrote “You are full of your material - your family, your friends, your region of the country, your generation - when it is fresh and seems urgently worth communicating to readers. No amount of learned skills can substitute for the feeling of having a lot to say, of bringing news. Memories, impressions, and emotions from your first 20 years on earth are most writers’ main material; little that comes afterward is quite so rich and resonant. By the age of 40, you have probably mined the purest veins of this precious lode; after that, continued creativity is a matter of sifting the leavings.” Additionally, students will be encouraged to open themselves to critical analysis by their peers in order to learn what works and does not in their fiction, understanding the idea of editing and rewriting as integral parts of creating fiction. Above all we will be exploring the art of seeing and how sharpening this is the single most important tool in the writer’s toolbox.

The primary text for the class will be the students’ work. Each student will submit three stories across the semester.

CRWR 191R - My Heart With Pleasure Fills: Poems of Delight & Discovery

The French novelist Henry de Montherlant coined the maxim, “Happiness write write”, which suggests that happiness is a blank that can’t be described. It doesn’t show up on the page the way misery and sorrow do. In this workshop course, students will respond to this idea, a common romantic prejudice, by showing that joy, delight and awe, too can be written. Through extensive reading of published poems and creation of their own work, students will celebrate those moments of happiness that most of us do - in spite of everything Life throws at us - experience.

*Course title is a nod to Wordsworth’s “Daffodils” poem.

Prerequisite(s)/Course Notes:
WSC 001  and CRWR 133 . May be repeated for credit when topics vary. As individual subjects are selected, each is assigned a letter (A-Z) which is affixed to the course number. Specific titles and course descriptions for special topics courses are available in the online class schedule.

View Course Offering(s):

Summer I 2025

Summer II 2025

Summer III 2025

Fall 2025