CW 120 W — Sentence by Sentence: Create Your Style
Quarter: Summer
Instructor(s): Thomas McNeely
Date(s): Jun 24—Aug 30
Class Recording Available: Yes
Tuition: $1000
Refund Deadline: Jun 27
Unit(s): 3
Enrollment Limit: 24
Status: Registration opens May 20, 8:30 am (PT)
Quarter: Summer
Unit(s): 3
Duration: 10 weeks
Date(s): Jun 24—Aug 30
Tuition: $1000
Refund Deadline: Jun 27
Instructor(s): Thomas McNeely
Enrollment Limit: 24
Recording Available: Yes
Status: Registration opens May 20, 8:30 am (PT)
No iron spike can pierce a human heart as icily as a period in the right place.—Isaac Babel
In fiction and nonfiction narrative, what grabs readers’ and editors’ attention is style. In this course, we will develop our unique prose styles, with the aim of drawing readers deeply into our stories. We will write a variety of short exercises to experiment with language as sound, the use of rhetorical tropes, modes of narration (descriptive, internal, summary, and scene), and use of genres. Students will select authors to imitate in short exercises to internalize the lessons that we learn from these authors’ stylistic choices. We will write and workshop short scenes to develop our unique prose styles, employing lessons about craft to create specific dramatic effects. We will learn from the work of masters like James Joyce, John Barth, Flannery O’Connor, Raymond Carver, and Gertrude Stein and read about developing our styles in essays by Raymond Queneau, Francine Prose, John Gardner, and others, all with special attention to tone and point of view. Additionally, students may choose an author to study, imitate, and discuss throughout the course.
In fiction and nonfiction narrative, what grabs readers’ and editors’ attention is style. In this course, we will develop our unique prose styles, with the aim of drawing readers deeply into our stories. We will write a variety of short exercises to experiment with language as sound, the use of rhetorical tropes, modes of narration (descriptive, internal, summary, and scene), and use of genres. Students will select authors to imitate in short exercises to internalize the lessons that we learn from these authors’ stylistic choices. We will write and workshop short scenes to develop our unique prose styles, employing lessons about craft to create specific dramatic effects. We will learn from the work of masters like James Joyce, John Barth, Flannery O’Connor, Raymond Carver, and Gertrude Stein and read about developing our styles in essays by Raymond Queneau, Francine Prose, John Gardner, and others, all with special attention to tone and point of view. Additionally, students may choose an author to study, imitate, and discuss throughout the course.
THOMAS MCNEELY
Former Jones Lecturer; Former Stegner Fellow, Stanford
Thomas McNeely is the author of Pictures of the Shark: Stories, a Foreword Reviews Indies Award finalist and a Massachusetts Book Awards "Must Read" longlist selection, and the novel Ghost Horse, winner of the Gival Press Novel Award. He has received an NEA fellowship in prose, and his stories have appeared in The Atlantic, Ploughshares, and other magazines and anthologies and have been shortlisted for The Best American Short Stories, The O. Henry Prize Stories, and the Pushcart Prize. McNeely received an MFA from Emerson College.Textbooks for this course:
(Required) Raymond Queneau, Exercises in Style (ISBN 978-0811220354)
(Required) Francine Prose, Reading Like A Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them (ISBN 978-0060777050)
(Required) John Gardner, The Art of Fiction: Notes on Craft for Young Writers (ISBN 978-0679734031)
(Required) Ron Hansen, Editor, You've Got To Read This: Contemporary American Writers Introduce Stories that Held Them in Awe (ISBN 978-0060982027)
(Required) Francine Prose, Reading Like A Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them (ISBN 978-0060777050)
(Required) John Gardner, The Art of Fiction: Notes on Craft for Young Writers (ISBN 978-0679734031)
(Required) Ron Hansen, Editor, You've Got To Read This: Contemporary American Writers Introduce Stories that Held Them in Awe (ISBN 978-0060982027)