This section of English 384 will continue to develop and refine the basic skills students have learned in Engl284: Introduction to Short Story Writing through an imitative concentration on plot dynamics. We often speak of plot quantitatively (“this story has no plot”), or we couple it with other words like “mechanics” or “device” – words that suggest that plot is an easily automated, recyclable aspect of fiction writing. Yet, both of these usages isolate “what happens” in a story from all other components of the story itself. Instead, what we’ll emphasize in this class is the relationship that plot has to its mode of presentation – which is, essentially, a relationship that contains a story’s structure, form, and theme. In other words, we will use plot as the map for pursuit of a kind of Unified Theory of Fiction: a theory that supposes the connective nature of one element to all other elements of craft. We’ll do this by careful emulation of published fiction in various literary forms.

This will be a reading and writing intensive class.

Prerequisites:

ENGL 283 & ENGL 284