Courses

Good short stories are carefully constructed, although they may appear perfectly natural and organic. Structure is as important to a story as architecture is to a building. When we explore how structure works, we can learn to make our stories more impactful and lasting.

In this course, we will begin studying structure by reading the stories of contemporary writers like Stuart Dybek, Julie Otsuka, Alice Munro, Carmen Maria Machado, and others, analyzing how each author chose to build their story, so we can borrow these techniques. We will learn about the dramatic arc made famous by Aristotle in his study of tragedy and the ways it can be applicable to the writing of short stories, and we will also explore less traditional structures that “shape” the story in unexpected ways, such as around an interview, a list, a rhetorical device, or even a single sentence. In addition to published short stories, we will read selected craft essays and author interviews provided by the instructor. In-class writing prompts will allow students to experiment and try out different fiction-writing approaches, including shaping techniques. By the end of the course, each student will have written and workshopped a complete story draft as well as acquired a practical understanding of story structure to support their next writing project.