ENG 273: Reading and Writing Short Stories
Instructor: Brittany Winland
Email: bwinland@hawaii.edu
** Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays will be asynchronous work days. On Wednesdays and Fridays we will meet on Zoom to discuss readings, do some craft exercises, and workshop your pieces.
Course Description:
Short stories are generally considered to be between 1,000—8,000 words, and they usually differ from novels in more than just word count; according to writer Lorrie Moore, “A short story is a love affair, a novel is a marriage. A short story is a photograph; a novel is a film.”
In this class we will read short stories from various writers of varying lengths, forms, and genres, and discuss them in class together, trying to pinpoint how they work (or even, how they don’t work). We will also read some essays on craft and do writing exercises in class. Each week, you will compose a Writing Experiment of your own and workshop it along with peers’ work in a small group.
Some craft elements we will explore:
- Plot
- Narrators
- Point of View
- Form & Structure
- Character
- Voice
- Setting
- Story time
- Revision
Assignments:
- Weekly discussion posts
- Weekly Writing Experiment
- Workshopping and Workshop Memos
- Final Portfolio
- Process Reflection