Fiction Writing: Narrative Point of View

(EGL 106)

Intended for writers at all stages, this course will focus initially on narrative point of view—who tells the story and why? Participants will bring ongoing work, around twenty pages of a story or a chapter from a novel, for roundtable discussion and critique. While we will consider all aspects of the work, ranging from narrative architecture to significant detail and effective, economical dialogue, we will pay particular attention to exploring the dramatic advantages and thematic consequences of various points of views, with an eye to finding the right one for each story or novel. We will also read a collection of short masterpieces, each of which exemplifies a different method of narration. What are the narrator’s motivations, and how do those motivations shape and drive the plot? The interplay between the narrative lens, or perspective, of a story and its content not only must cast a spell of imaginative credibility, but also must uncover, layer by layer, the story or novel’s themes. Of course, our true aim is to help make our manuscripts the best that they can be in all ways, beginning with the writer’s opening decision: point of view.

Lynn Stegner, Lecturer in Continuing Studies

Lynn Stegner has written four novels. Undertow and Fata Morgana were both nominated for the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize, and Pipers at the Gates of Dawn was awarded a Faulkner Society’s Gold Medal. Her most recent book, Because a Fire Was in My Head, won the Faulkner Award for Best Novel, and was a 2007 Literary Ventures Selection, as well as a New York Times Editors’ Choice. She has been the recipient of fellowships from the Western States Arts Council and the National Endowment for the Arts, as well as a Fulbright Scholarship to Ireland. Stegner is currently at work on a volume of short stories entitled The Anarchic Hand, and is co-editing a collection of essays by Western writers.