Studying and Writing the Short Story

In this course we will look at fiction as something carefully, willfully crafted with vision and purpose. We will become experts in appreciating how stories are built, what materials they use, where they want to take us, and how they manage to move us there. We will read short stories and essays examining what writers are up to by way of point-of-view, narrative distance, tension, pacing, characterization, dialogue, setting, plot, and sentence rhythm. As well, we will write several in-class creative-writing assignments, one 10–15 page short story to be workshopped, and one 7–8 page paper examining craft in a short story.