ACC 321 Creative Writing: A Stylistic Approach

Content

This advanced academic core writing course will focus on the production of fictive texts, primarily short stories and text fragments that may be reworked into those short stories. Although some emphasis will be on the first and second canons of rhetoric, namely sources of fiction (invention) and plot/narrative (arrangement), the main focus will be on the micro-level of technique development, focusing on English style, grammar and rhetoric. The main methodological framework will be stylistic & rhetorical and will centre on production. In this sense it will complement the Acc220 course which focused on analysis and the Acc120 course which focused on knowledge acquisition. Some methodological tools that will be used include foregrounding, register, conversation analysis, deixis, etc. Such tools will be applied to the writing of all the core aspects of a default creative writing course, e.g. how to evoke a setting; how to invent characters; how to structure and organize plots; how to construct various (narrator & character) point of view; how to produce powerful beginnings and endings; how to develop dialogue, etc. The course will involve a lot of writing – in this sense it will be a veritable progymnasmata for the budding creative writer. There will also be lots of drafting and redrafting to hone English language and style skills. To monitor writing skills, students will read a number of selected short stories throughout the course and will be able to point out and explain what makes them emotive/effective and be able to copy/imitate/echo those strategies in different contexts in their own writing. Moreover, there will be constant critical feedback from both the instructor and peers. By the end of the course, students will have a portfolio of work to take away with them. The course will conclude with students producing an extensive short story where they will consciously seek to put into practice all of the stylistic and rhetorical skills they have been taught. They will write a (shorter) short story for the mid-term assessment and before that they will produce a good example of ‘flash fiction’ (max. 2 pages) in the first half of the semester, which will count towards the portfolios grade. The mid-term and end-of term writing assignments will be read and co-assessed by a number of national and international creative writing teachers

Instructor

Dr. Michael Burke

Period

Fall / 2011

Course Material

• Josep Novakovich. (1995). The Fiction Writer’s Workshop. Cincinnati, Story Press, 2nd edition 2008.
• Dana Gioia & R.S. Gwynn. (2006). The Art of the Short Story. London: Pearson

Prerequisites

The following courses are required in order to take this course:

• ACC 120 Introduction to Rhetoric and Argumentation
• ACC 220 Stylistics

Additional Prerequisites

By special permission of the instructor.