ENGL 201-01, Introduction to Fiction Writing, Spring 2001

Abstract

You will perhaps have heard it said that great writing cannot be taught. This is, in some ways, certainly true. Not, I believe, because you must be born with some mystical gift in order to write good fiction, but because good writing, the best writing, challenges what we think we know about good writing to begin with. In other words, some of the best short stories break the “rules” of good fiction writing. Nonetheless, readers have certain expectations when they sit down to read a story. The more you know about those expectations, and what effect meeting them has, the more effective your writing will be, even if you should choose to (as I hope all of you will) defy those expectations. This course will give you the tools needed for a rudimentary understanding of the effects your writing choices may have on your readers, and the reasons why a writer might make one or another stylistic, plot, character or structural choice.