A Rough Draft on the Syllabus

In this class you will explore three different genres (fiction, nonfiction, poetry) and imitate author’s style and email me your piece, so that I can give you feedback before small group and large class discussion.

Group work, pair work, and discussions are an important part of the class. In-class participation will affect your progress in this class.

You will produce three pieces (from five to seven pages long) of craft from each genre you have learned and revise one of your favorite pieces as your final paper.

For the first half of the workshop, you select a paragraph from your piece to let the class dissect the narrative techniques and discuss how sentence structure function in your narrative. For the other half, the larger class will discuss and dissect and comment your piece for further development.

You will write a 1-2 paragraph response to assigned close reading and will read it to class each week. In your response you will explain what is and what is not effective, in terms of narrative techniques and devices and elements.