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It's
About Time!
No More
Breakfast-to-Bed Stories
Facilitator:
Peg Alford
Workshop Syllabus
It can be difficult to handle the
temporal part of writing. How does one effectively show the passing of
time? Can a writer summarize without fear of breaking the cardinal rule:
“show, don’t tell”? Pacing narration and deftly crafting time issues are
some of the hardest skills for a writer to acquire. It takes practice and
confidence. This course will help.
Week one: What is the
breakfast-to-bed story and how does one avoid writing it?
What is a scene? How does it relate to a story? How do scenes
relate to one another in a story? Acquiring voice and
authority–developing confidence to handle time issues deftly.
Week two: What is summary?
Doesn’t it break the rule of “don’t
tell; show?" Addressing the necessity of letting go of writing that
is in the way--and some practical suggestions about what to do with
writing you can’t bear to part with.
Week three: Flashbacks. Why
flashbacks may be better designated to the realm of psychological
phenomenon as opposed to use as a literary device. Examining pacing in
narration; mapping and diagramming a story’s pacing and time coverage.
What about transitions and white space?
Week four: Now what? Wrapping
up what’s been covered, answering questions, and sharing practical
suggestions for students’ further exploration.
Objective:
Students will learn to examine and identify ways that successful writers
manage temporal issues in fiction. Students will discover what constitutes
a scene, identify the time frame of scenes, and explore how scenes work
together in a complete fiction. Students will examine the use of summary
and flashbacks, and explore pacing and immediacy.
Prerequisites:
Students should have a 2,000- to 3,500-word story ready for the first
class. They should be prepared to share and discuss specific elements of
one another’s stories; this class is founded on the belief that writers
learn more about their own work through the process of articulating and
examining writing under the guidance of an experienced facilitator who
directs the exploration.
Recommended
texts:
Narrative
Design: Working with Imagination, Craft, and Form by Madison
Smartt Bell
If
You Want to Write by Brenda Ueland.
Purchase of texts is not necessary but
is highly recommended.
About
the Facilitator:
Peg Alford is an award- winning writer and award-winning teacher. She
received her MFA in writing from the Warren Wilson MFA Program for
Writers, and her bachelor's degree in education from the University of
Pittsburgh. Currently, she is working with an editor on her first novel,
Resting On Error. Her short
story collection, What's
Done, was, in a lesser form, a finalist for the Flannery O'Connor
Short Fiction Award. She has taught fiction and poetry writing at the
University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown and the College of Charleston. Her
poetry, fiction, and nonfiction have been published in various venues,
including English Journal, Live Poets Society Anthology, Vol. IV,
House Calls, The State, South Carolina Public Policy Forum, Business and
Economic Review, and others.
Workshop
Begins: November
11, 2002
Duration: 4 weeks
Tuition: $80
 
To pay by check or money order CLICK HERE
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Recommended
Books recommended on this page are not
required reading for participation in the course, but are strongly
recommended by the facilitator.
Narrative
Design: Working with Imagination, Craft, and Form by Madison
Smartt Bell
"This is and should be an indispensable book for the teacher and reader and writer: original in its emphases and incisive in in its attitudes on the art and craft of fiction. Madison Smartt Bell is a writer at the very front rank of his generation, and generations to come will know him also for Narrative Design. He puts what he knows about structure to spellbinding, word-spinning use."
-- Nicholas Delbanco, author of The Lost Suitcase: Reflections on the Literary Life
If
You Want to Write by Brenda Ueland.
In If You Want to Write, Brenda Ueland sets forth not just a philosophy about how to write or how to create, but also about how to live. Beginning writers will certainly be encouraged by Ueland's words, but even the most experienced have much to glean from Ueland's simple wisdom. "Everybody," writes Ueland in the opening chapter, "is talented, original, and has something important to say." One must think, she says, "of telling a story, not of writing it."
And just because If You Want to Write is passionate, sincere, and even spiritual, do not think it is not also witty. One footnote bluntly declaims, "No doubt my terms would horrify a psychologist but I do not care at all." Elsewhere Ueland titles a chapter "Why Women Who Do Too Much Housework Should Neglect It for Their Writing." Amen, sister!
-- Amazon.com reviews
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