OWC 304 C — Novel II: Plot and Structure
Quarter: Spring
Instructor(s): Thomas McNeely
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): Thomas McNeely
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.
THOMAS MCNEELY
Former Jones Lecturer; Former Stegner Fellow, Stanford
Thomas McNeely is the author of Pictures of the Shark: Stories, a Foreword Reviews Indies Award finalist and a Massachusetts Book Awards "Must Read" longlist selection, and the novel Ghost Horse, winner of the Gival Press Novel Award. He has received an NEA fellowship in prose, and his stories have appeared in The Atlantic, Ploughshares, and other magazines and anthologies and have been shortlisted for The Best American Short Stories, The O. Henry Prize Stories, and the Pushcart Prize. McNeely received an MFA from Emerson College.Textbooks for this course:
(Required) Tobias Wolff, Old School (ISBN 978-0375701498)
(Required) Jhumpa Lahiri, The Namesake (ISBN 978-0618485222)
(Required) Stephen Koch, The Modern Library Writer’s Workshop (ISBN 978-0375755583)
(Required) Jhumpa Lahiri, The Namesake (ISBN 978-0618485222)
(Required) Stephen Koch, The Modern Library Writer’s Workshop (ISBN 978-0375755583)