Beginning Fiction Writing

(EGL 101)

As Paul Auster once said, stories only happen to people who can tell them. It doesn’t matter whether you have just climbed Mt. Everest or just returned from the market, the job of the storyteller is the same: to capture the readers’ imagination and make them care about what happens next. This course is designed to help beginning writers tell their stories by giving them the basic tools they will need for crafting a memorable work of fiction. Through lectures on craft, short writing exercises, assignments, and discussion of student work, apprentice fiction writers will learn the nuts and bolts of fiction writing, such as plot, conflict, characterization, dialogue, narrative voice, and point of view. We will read such authors as Ernest Hemingway, Flannery O’Connor, and Jim Shepard, with a particular focus on how they begin a story and demand the reader’s attention.

Jim Gavin, Former Stegner Fellow

James Gavin’s work has appeared in ZYZZYVA. He also writes the Cultural Obits column for The Faster Times. He has worked as a sportswriter and as a production coordinator for Jeopardy!. Gavin is currently working on a novel and a collection of stories, both set in Southern California.