FICTION WRITING WORKSHOP: THE SENTENCE

Course Description

In this fiction writing workshop, we will turn our attention to one of the most fundamental elements of narrative: the sentence. In "The Sentence is a Lonely Place", Garielle Lutz describes an admiration for "narratives of steep verbal topography, narratives in which the sentence is a complete, portable solitude, a minute immediacy of consummated language—the sort of sentence that, even when liberated from its receiving context, impresses itself upon the eye and the ear as a totality, an omnitude, unto itself." Using Lutz’s essay as a framework, we will place an acute emphasis on sentences as fundamental units of action, movement, temporality, and dynamism in prose. In this class, students will write and workshop original stories, and experiment with the many possible forms, shapes, and contours of sentences along the way. Together we will create a vocabulary to describe sentences and their essential roles in fiction in order to explore how sentences are shaped and how they, in turn, shape narrative. Through a critical and concentrated attention to language, we will produce writing that renders our imaginative provinces into dynamic narrative forms. Throughout the quarter, we will also encourage and challenge one other to develop a concentrated writing practice in order to produce fiction that might succeed on a number of levels.

Required Text

All required texts will be available on Canvas.