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, the short story derives its dramatic power mainly from being short. Less is more, and in this course we will explore that precept in depth. We’ll read and talk about exemplary stories from contemporary masters. We’ll talk about inference-making and 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. You’ll complete a series of writing exercises, creating and developing a story by practicing the essential methodologies deployed by practitioners of the form—concision, elision, compression. This introductory course presumes no expertise in the short story. Discussion of your written 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 into the future.