Prof. Joseph Han
T, 315-545, SAKAM D102
Course Description
This seminar is a survey of three distinct yet kindred book-length forms—the short story cycle, novel-in-stories, and the multi-POV novel—each offering a complex and expansive approach to developing an overarching narrative unified by a particular subject, setting, cast of characters, event, and timeframe. What groundwork is necessary for a writer to build out their fictional world, and how might the structure of a narrative then reflect its various themes and goals? Rather than eschew narrative linearity and chronology, these forms emphasize the multiplicity of experience through their diversity in style and technique, thus weaving a polyphonic narrative and a tapestry of intersecting and diverging situations, perspectives, and timelines.
Short story collections are not merely a gathering of a writer’s best previously published work, but often cohere around a particular thematic framework, going even further by way of recurring characters or settings, thus described as interconnected or linked stories enlarging the view of the world each story takes place in. The Story Cycle as a term speaks to the form as an elaborate system of parallels, contrasts, echoes, and variations, as the meaning of one story can change with the encounter of the next story, where a collection’s parts must be read in context rather than in isolation—also in a particular order toward a certain effect overall. An overarching narrative may reveal itself by the end, signaling developments that can occur across a character or group of character’s lifetimes. Many writers start out writing short stories, and the jump to a novel as a form is often intimidating and overwhelming. How can a single short story map onto a larger terrain such as a story cycle, where a writer’s recurring interests and investments can find new angles and resonances? How might a story collection disguise itself as novel or vice-versa?
The Novel-in-Stories is a hybrid form, as their name implies, where the chapter as a unit or measure of narrative is taken instead by a short story that can be read as standalone, but whose effect garners greater meaning in a larger sequence of short stories and related events. The novel-in-stories, also known as a composite novel, perhaps places greater emphasis on causality, where the gaps between each story require a mediation of time and story development. What might the novel-in-stories accomplish differently than a traditional novel with chapters and sections as it blurs across both forms? Perhaps the most unwieldy and complex form of all three, the Multi-POV Novel encapsulates various voices, traditionally in alternating first-person narration but also third-person omniscient narration, where a series of chapters interspersed throughout are tied to a specific character, voice, or entity. The multi-POV novel as a form invites innovation and experimentation, on the way to sustaining various plots and character arcs moving simultaneously, which only increases what’s possible in the generative and revision stage of writing, thus requiring flexibility, spontaneity, and the discernment needed to realize what is necessary rather than potentially distracting and extraneous to the narrative.
Nonetheless, each form maintains an affinity toward one another in terms of craft and intention—a certain capacity and level of development which students will be challenged to explore in mapping an intricate, dynamic, or kaleidoscopic vision and narrative design for a longer project. Throughout the semester, students will write a set of interrelated prose pieces, whether connected short stories or chapters, to discover which form at large best suits their strengths, purposes, and goals. Though this is a Techniques in Fiction seminar, writers of nonfiction who might be working on an analogous project (memoir-in-essays), and poets interested in writing fiction are more than welcome regardless of previous experience/coursework. Likewise, students who are not in the CW track may enroll with the instructor’s approval.
Student Learning Outcomes
- Establish a writing practice with discipline, rigor, and playfulness on the way to discovery and innovation.
- Establish a reading practice, and learn how to become a better reader of your own work and the work of others through reflection and generative feedback/critique.
- Apply advanced research methods and/or creative writing techniques to the short story or novel chapter as forms.
- Demonstrate written and oral ability to map, historicize, and contextualize one’s craft principles and critical perspective of the short story collection and novel.
- Develop sustained focus and exercise awareness on how to map, envision, and draft a long-term creative project, whether MA thesis or doctoral dissertation. Learn to reinforce and protect one’s long-term artistic vision.
- Engage in community building in the spirit of collaboration, advocacy, and solidarity toward an inviting and invigorating creative environment.
Course Texts
(This list is tentative and subject to change. If you have suggestions, or thoughts on the alternate texts being considered, please email Prof. Han, jhan2@hawaii.edu)
Story Cycles:
Brandon Taylor, Filthy Animals (2021)
Mariah Rigg, Extinction Capital of the World (2025)
Novel-in-Stories:
Muriel Leung, How to Fall in Love In A Time of Unnameable Disaster (2024)
Susan Muaddi Darraj, Behind You Is the Sea (2024)
or Ananda Lima, Craft: Stories I Wrote for the Devil (2024)
Multi-POV Novel:
Tommy Orange, There There (2018)
Kaveh Akbar, Martyr! (2024)
or Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, Chain-Gang All-Stars (2023)
Secondary readings:
David Lodge, excerpts from After Bakhtin
Peter Turchi, excerpts from Maps of the Imagination: The Writer as Cartographer
Jennifer J. Smith, excerpts from The American Short Story Cycle
James Nagel, excerpts from The Contemporary American Short-Story Cycle
David Jauss, “Stacking Stones: Building a Unified Story Collection,” Alone With All That Could Happen: On Writing Fiction
Assignments
- Weekly Critical Responses/Creative Packets
- Facilitate Class Discussion + Story Guide sheet
- Book Mapping Project + Generative Writing Workshop Prompt
- Short Story or Novel Excerpt
- Workshop Participation + Feedback w/ Annotations, Editorial Letters
- Character Map + Book Outline + Synopsis
- Final Portfolio