|
|
Syllabus - Assignments
How Student Work Will Be Evaluated:
Throughout the course, you will submit a number of different types of assignments designed to demonstrate your understanding of key concepts, your engagement with peer work, your facility with fictional narrative techniques, and your critical thinking about the craft of writing. These assignments will be elaborated on within discussion units, but the general types of assignments are listed below.
Example and Explanation -- Each student will choose one story in Best American from which to draw examples throughout the semester, becoming the class expert on that particular story. During the course of discussion units, you will be asked to submit examples of the concepts or techniques discussed, accompanied by a thoughtful explanation of why you believe the example to be an important addition to the discussion. You will be asked to find examples of fictional craft that in some way add to or enrich the discussion at hand, rather than simply illustrating ground already covered. Throughout the course material, examples will be drawn from stories anthologized in What If?, so you should read these stories as early in the semester as possible.
Writing Exercise -- Writing exercises are directed writing tasks designed to provide practice at a particular skill. Many of these will be drawn from What If?
Critical Reflection -- You will be asked to reflect from time to time on writing exercises, published stories, your own fiction and redrafts, peer assignments and fiction, and your experience of moving through the various units of a class discussion units.
Stories and Redrafts -- You will submit one story and redraft it once during the semester.
Story Critiques -- You will provide a written critique of each student story submitted for workshop in your assigned group, using the critical vocabulary you develop to tell the author techniques you see at work in the story and how the story might be strengthened.
Craftbooks -- Each student will create their own craftbook, a three-ring binder with sections matching each of the subsections of the course materials (Point of View, Plot, Character, etc.), in which they will keep notes, writing exercises of their own and from fellow students, and relevant quotes about each of these topics. This craftbook will become a resource for you as you begin and draft stories, both during the class and as you continue writing afterward. If you find yourself stuck on a particular problem in a story, it will give you somewhere to go for help.
(tOFP note: When I have taught the class, I've compiled student exercises into an online class craftbook as well. For the OpenFiction Project I am replacing this feature with a link to the blog I'm starting, which will hold my own notes on craft and will be open to comment. Visit my craftbook/blog at http://openfiction.blogspot.com. In addition, I've created a Craftbook Wiki for tOFP, in which site visitors may post their own notes, suggested exercises, and assignment responses.)
|
|
