FICT 78 — The Short Story for Absolute Beginners
Quarter: Summer
Instructor(s): Daniel Orozco
Date(s): Jul 9—Aug 27
Class Recording Available: Yes
Class Meeting Day: Thursdays
Class Meeting Time: 6:00—8:30 pm (PT)
Tuition: $615
Refund Deadline: Jul 11
Unit(s): 2
Enrollment Limit: 24
Status: Registration opens May 18, 8:30 am (PT)
Quarter: Summer
Day: Thursdays
Duration: 8 weeks
Time: 6:00—8:30 pm (PT)
Date(s): Jul 9—Aug 27
Unit(s): 2
Tuition: $615
Refund Deadline: Jul 11
Instructor(s): Daniel Orozco
Enrollment Limit: 24
Recording Available: Yes
Status: Registration opens May 18, 8:30 am (PT)
In 1842, Edgar Allan Poe said 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, the short story attains its dramatic power mainly by being short. In this introductory course, we’ll explore how and why that works.
We’ll read exemplary stories by contemporary masters. We’ll talk about inference-making, world-building, and foreshadowing; about John Gardner’s “profluence,” James Joyce’s “epiphany,” Jerome Stern’s “shapes of fiction”; about conflict, crisis, tension, and closure. You’ll complete a series of exercises that work toward conceiving and writing your own short story. Discussion will be supportive and respectful, exploratory and generative rather than prescriptive. The goal is not necessarily to finish your story, but rather to gain an understanding of the fundamental elements that shape all stories, enriching your reading and writing practice beyond this course.
We’ll read exemplary stories by contemporary masters. We’ll talk about inference-making, world-building, and foreshadowing; about John Gardner’s “profluence,” James Joyce’s “epiphany,” Jerome Stern’s “shapes of fiction”; about conflict, crisis, tension, and closure. You’ll complete a series of exercises that work toward conceiving and writing your own short story. Discussion will be supportive and respectful, exploratory and generative rather than prescriptive. The goal is not necessarily to finish your story, but rather to gain an understanding of the fundamental elements that shape all stories, enriching your reading and writing practice beyond this course.
DANIEL OROZCO
Author
Daniel Orozco is an associate professor, emeritus, in the Creative Writing Program at the University of Idaho. He was a Stegner Fellow and Jones Lecturer at Stanford and 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. Textbooks for this course:
(Required) Jerome Stern, Micro Fiction: An Anthology of Fifty Really Short Stories, 1st Edition (ISBN 978-0393314328)