FICT 78 — Short Fiction Workshop: The Short Story for Absolute Beginners
Quarter: Winter
Day(s): Tuesdays
Course Format: Live Online (About Formats)
Duration: 8 weeks
Date(s): Jan 23—Mar 12
Time: 6:30—9:20 pm (PT)
Refund Deadline: Jan 25
Units: 2
Tuition: $650
Instructor(s): Daniel Orozco
Limit: 25
Class Recording Available: Yes
Status: Open
Winter
Date(s)
Jan 23—Mar 12
8 weeks
Refund Date
Jan 25
2 Units
Fees
$650
Instructor(s):
Daniel Orozco
Limit
25
Recording
Yes
Open
Back in 1842, Edgar Allan Poe said this of the short story: “The unity of effect or impression is a point of the greatest importance, [and] cannot be thoroughly preserved in productions whose perusal cannot be completed at one sitting.” In other words, less is more. The short story attains its dramatic heft mainly by being short, and the best stories derive their emotive power over the reader via elision, compression, and concision—the three essential methodologies for all practitioners of the form.
As you work through a series of assignments, you’ll conceive, build, and develop a story. We’ll talk about your work and about exemplary works from contemporary masters. We’ll talk about first sentences, first paragraphs, world-building, and foreshadowing; about John Gardner’s “profluence,” James Joyce’s “epiphany,” and Jerome Stern’s “shapes of fiction”; about conflict, crisis, tension, and closure.
This introductory course presumes no expertise in the short story form. Discussion of your assignments will be supportive and respectful, exploratory and generative rather than prescriptive. Your primary goal is not to finish a story per se, but rather to learn and understand the fundamental elements of all short stories, honing and enriching your reading and writing practice into the future.
As you work through a series of assignments, you’ll conceive, build, and develop a story. We’ll talk about your work and about exemplary works from contemporary masters. We’ll talk about first sentences, first paragraphs, world-building, and foreshadowing; about John Gardner’s “profluence,” James Joyce’s “epiphany,” and Jerome Stern’s “shapes of fiction”; about conflict, crisis, tension, and closure.
This introductory course presumes no expertise in the short story form. Discussion of your assignments will be supportive and respectful, exploratory and generative rather than prescriptive. Your primary goal is not to finish a story per se, but rather to learn and understand the fundamental elements of all short stories, honing and enriching your reading and writing practice into the future.
DANIEL OROZCO
Associate Professor, Emeritus, Creative Writing Program, University of Idaho; Former Stegner Fellow and Former Jones Lecturer, Stanford
Daniel Orozco is the author of Orientation and Other Stories. His work has appeared in The Best American Short Stories, The Best American Mystery Stories, The Best American Essays, and Pushcart Prize anthologies. He has received an NEA fellowship and the Whiting Award. He received an MFA from the University of Washington. Textbooks for this course:
(Required) Jerome Stern, Micro Fiction: An Anthology of Fifty Really Short Stories, 1st Edition (ISBN 978-0393314328)