Creative Writing

Course Description

This course introduces students to creative writing and is conducted primarily in a discussion-critique roundtable format. The primary goals of the course are for students to sharpen their observational skills, to develop and expand their imaginative writing processes, to develop and expand their understanding of the human experience through the creative writing process, and to develop skills and techniques for producing poems, fictional short stories, and personal essays that allow them to express themselves and which may be publishable. Students will also be introduced to the evaluation process by which professional editors evaluate professionally written work.

Topics and Objectives

Creative Writing Fundamentals: The Writing Process

• Examine strategies for each stage of the writing process, including prewriting, drafting, editing, and revising.
• Analyze published poems in order to identify how professional writers achieve their effects.
• Examine proper manuscript format.
• Apply the techniques of critiquing the writing of others in a positive, constructive, and supportive way.
• Revise your own work based on self-assessment and the suggestions of others to correct common errors and inconsistencies so that the work better fits explicit criteria.
• Develop and articulate criteria by which one evaluates creative works.
• Analyze and apply examples of guidelines published by professional venues.

Creative Writing Techniques: Writing Poetry

• Analyze the use of figurative language in published poems.
• Compose original poems using figurative language, line breaks, allusions, and metaphors to shape one's meaning with intensity and to connect one's personal experience to the larger culture.
• Analyze the use of formal structures (rhyme and rhythm) in published poems.
• Compose original poems in rhyme and rhythm to organize one's work, guide the reader, accent key terms, and amplify a poem's effect on the reader.

Creative Writing Techniques: Structuring the Short Story

• Analyze published stories in order to identify how professional writers achieve their effects.
• Plot an original short fictional story.
• Plan the scene-by-scene progression within this story.
• Explain the function of each scene.

Creative Writing Techniques: Writing the Short Story

• Develop and describe characters to fit a planned plot.
• Develop dialogue that is specific to each character.
• Select a point of view and other narrative strategies that fit this plot.
• Write an original short fictional story.

Creative Writing Techniques: Writing a Personal Essay

• Analyze published personal essays in order to identify how professional writers achieve their effects.
• Write a personal essay, emphasizing the use of literary technique to produce humor and/or emotional intensity or to provide personal perspectives on a matter of great importance.