OWC 304 A — Novel II: Plot and Structure
Quarter: Spring
Instructor(s): Stephanie Reents
Date(s): Apr 1—Jun 7
Class Recording Available: Yes
Tuition: $1240
Refund Deadline: Apr 4
Unit(s): 3
Enrollment Limit: 15
Status: Closed
Quarter: Spring
Unit(s): 3
Duration: 10 weeks
Date(s): Apr 1—Jun 7
Tuition: $1240
Refund Deadline: Apr 4
Instructor(s): Stephanie Reents
Enrollment Limit: 15
Recording Available: Yes
Status: Closed
This course is not open to the public, but rather by admission only. For more information on the Online Writing Certificate Program and its application process, please click here.
In this course, students will focus on how to create and sustain the “long middle” of their novels, continuing their journey toward the completion of their manuscript. The long middle is the area where plot and structure of the novel are most important, because we may have lost that burst of energy that propelled our beginnings, but the end is not yet in sight. This course will teach students how to continue building suspense and intensity past the inciting incident by alternating between different subplots and points of view, to ensure modulation; and framing scenes and chapters for maximum tension, to keep readers turning pages.
In this course, students will focus on how to create and sustain the “long middle” of their novels, continuing their journey toward the completion of their manuscript. The long middle is the area where plot and structure of the novel are most important, because we may have lost that burst of energy that propelled our beginnings, but the end is not yet in sight. This course will teach students how to continue building suspense and intensity past the inciting incident by alternating between different subplots and points of view, to ensure modulation; and framing scenes and chapters for maximum tension, to keep readers turning pages.
STEPHANIE REENTS
Former Stegner Fellow, Stanford
Stephanie Reents is the author of The Kissing List, a collection of stories that was an Editors' Choice in The New York Times Book Review, and I Meant to Kill Ye, a bibliomemoir chronicling her journey into the strange void at the heart of Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian. She has twice received an O. Henry Prize for her short fiction. Her novel We Loved to Run will be out next year. Reents received a BA from Amherst College, a BA from Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, and an MFA from the University of Arizona. Textbooks for this course:
(Required) J.M. Coetzee, Disgrace (ISBN 978-0140296402)
(Required) Lisa Halliday, Asymmetry (ISBN 978-1501166785 )
(Required) Lisa Halliday, Asymmetry (ISBN 978-1501166785 )