Courses

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.