This Week and Next --- November 17 - 25

Finish discussion of Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper and view MasterPiece Theatre adaptation.

Working on our stories through DEEP REVISION.

Here's a link to Annie Lamott's "Shitty First Drafts" chapter from Bird by Bird.


Writing Prompts
Tuesday: Make a list of ways you can "suggest" age in your fiction writing.

Friday: Break your short story down into 3 sentences - beginning, middle and end.
Example: Cinderella story
1 Cinderella can't go.
2 She goes anyway.
3 Cinderella gets Prince.

Course Guidelines

Short Fiction

This class will explore different types of short stories across many genres. We will spend most of our time reading a variety of fiction and then we will be creating our own short stories that we will share with the rest of the class and, hopefully, create our own short story collection to keep. A great chance to let your inner creativity flow and to work on writing and editing skills!

Each week we will have at least 2 writing exercises to begin our class. You will keep them in a portfolio to turn in at the end of the quarter as part of your final grade. With each short story we read as a class, we will look for particular elements of style such as imagery, plot structure, characterization, point of view, etc. The idea being that by analyzing others literature, we may create our own.

Short Fiction Reading List (*subject to change)

Kate Chopin – Story of an Hour

Edgar Allan Poe – The Cask of Amontillado and The Black Cat

Ambrose Bierce – One Summer Night

Charlie Fish – Death by Scrabble

Mark Twain – The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County

Maria Goodin – Someone to Care For

Fernando Sorrentino – A Lifestyle

Roger Dean Kiser – Butterflies

Charlotte Perkins Gilman – The Yellow Wallpaper

Nathaniel Hawthorne – Young Goodman Brown

Herman Melville – Bartleby the Scrivener

Franz Kafka – The Metamorphosis

F. Scott Fitzgerald – The Jelly-bean

William Faulkner – A Rose for Emily

Ernest Hemingway – Hills Like White Elephants

Tillie Olson – I Stand Here Ironing

Shirley Jackson – The Lottery

Flannery O’ Conner – Everything That Rises Must Converge

Drabble

Flash Fiction

First Short story due November 28th

Second (Final) Short story due January 16th

Beware!

You may need to do work outside of the classroom.

Consider this your warning!!

Basic Course Description

Short Fiction

We will be reading a number of short stories by a variety of authors and also creating our own short fiction. Two short stories will be written over the course of the quarter. So if you like to write or want to improve your writing skills, here is a great chance to be creative with your writing! There will also be daily writing prompts to get us in the flow of tapping into our imagination.