Location: MHRA 2206

Syllabus

ENG 225-01

Time: 3:30 pm—4:45 pm MW

Location: MHRA 2206

Email: "Craig Nova" <>

Office: HHRA 3312

Office Hours: One hour before class and one hour afterwards. If this is inconvenient, contact me and we will set up an appointment.

Home telephone number: 919 732-1857

Cell: 919 259-0040

My website is

We are fortunate to have Jim Minick, a graduate student in the MFA program, to help with this class. Jim is an author, that is, he has published substantially, and he is a keen reader and extremely helpful.

His email is

His phone number is 336-541-8178

Jim’s website is

His office hours will be held in the Greensboro Review Office, which is in the MFA office. If you want to talk to him, please email him first. He is in the Greensboro Review office from 10:00-3:00 Monday through Thursday.

I wanted to say a few words about how this course will be organized, what is expected of you, and how the course will be graded.

First, though, I want to make it clear that this is not a sort of non academic course that is to be taken lightly or that you will be excused from rigorous standards. You will not be. In fact, you will be held up to demanding standards. We are going to do some work here. In fact, we are going to take writing as seriously as it should be taken, since the writing of fiction is about one of the most demanding things that someone can do.

So, first of all, this is a demanding, academic class.

Since we have 20 Students we will have enough time for each of you to do two stories. And each of these stories will be discussed in class. I don’t want to make a specific demand as far as the number of pages these stories will be, but surely they should be ten or so. They should show that you have thought about what the story is, worked hard, and that you have applied some of the tools, for writing fiction, that we will discuss. Almost any subject is fine by me, although the one variety of story that I want to exclude is so called Fantasy.

This variety of fiction is very hard to write and hard to criticize, since the rules of the game are constantly changing. I’m not saying that you shouldn’t write Fantasy, but that it is hard to do anything with it in a class like this. Primarily, the difficulty with Fantasy is that it depends on a peculiar world for its effects, rather than the basic interaction of characters who have real desires that lead to real actions. And I think that this basic interaction is what good writing is about. So, please understand: no Fantasy. Rather, please try to write about real people with real problems, although I am not saying this is a requirement. Just a suggestion.

So, the stories should be of substantial length and they should show that you have done some work on them. Ten pages, or so, double spacing, one inch margins, 12 point type.

The class will be organized so that for each meeting will we have two stories from students to talk about. When we discuss these stories, I’d like each of you to have made some notes that you can refer to.

The idea in these notes is that you want to find suggestions that will be helpful. Also, the important item here is to be precise, and to find practical things to mention. And I want to emphasize that the effort here is to be helpful. Friends will tell you the truth about something, but they won’t say something that is intentionally mean spirited or airily dismissive.

I want to say that my job, in these discussions, is to make sure that nothing untoward or unwarranted, gratuitous, hurtful is said. If I see this, I promise you I will put a stop to it. I am not saying you have to avoid the truth. I am saying you have to be considerate about the way you present it.

Also, as far as organization is concerned, we are going to send the stories to be discussed in a class by way of Blackboard.

Please see the hand out, which I will give you today, for directions in doing this, if you don’t already know how to do so.

The deadline for these stories is the Saturday evening (by midnight) before the Monday of the week when they are going to be discussed.

I will hand out a sign up sheet today for the entire semester, and so you should pick two dates and then write them down. I will also scan this sheet and send it to everyone in the class so that you will have it as a reminder.

This way, you will know, from today, when your stories are due.

Also, once a week, I will send, by way of Blackboard, a published story I think we should read and perhaps an essay about writing. We will discuss these in class. I can’t give you a list of these stories, since I want to adjust them to the difficulties you are having. For instance, if some of you are having trouble with structure, I will send some stories that have a strong structure. If you are having trouble with character, I will send some stories in which the characters are clear and well drawn. So, I will be adjusting these readings as we go along.

I will try to send these stories as early as I can for each class, but certainly by Saturday afternoon before the week they are going to be discussed. These published stories will usually be talked about on Thursdays.

These published stories are meant to be read carefully, and by that I mean you will look at the elements of them, such as its structure, characters, language, and vision, etc. Often, the story will have an unstated but still clear meaning, and you might try to think of what this is.

Also, from time to time, if I see a moment when you could benefit from doing an exercise, I will assign a short one for all of us to do.

Grading a fiction writing course is extremely difficult, but I want to be as precise as I can about it.

Half of your grade will be determined by the stories you write. This part of your grade will be decided by the success of the story, the amount of work that obviously went into it, the seriousness with which you took the project, and the way in which you have used the techniques we have talked about.

Sooner or later, this becomes subjective. But I will try to keep that to a minimum and to apply these standards to all equally.

Also, a story should be as finished as you can make it. Proof read it. Look for errors in syntax and spelling. Nothing is more obvious than a story that has been dashed off at the last moment.

Plagiarism will not be tolerated. This a serious academic violation and will be viewedas such. One of the things about the digital age is that the web makes it much easier to see if something has been lifted from another source.

The other half of your grade is class participation. This is important because there is a difference between having a general sensation about something and the work of putting this into words. It is this moment, I think, in which some learning takes place. And participation doesn’t mean just giving one opinion and saying nothing more. It means contributing to the conversations we will have.

Attendance is mandatory. I will have a sheet for you to sign for each class. More than one unexplained absence can result in being dropped from the class.

For the first class, we will introduce ourselves. Then we will discuss a two page story. Everyone in the class will do one the next day and email it to the entire class, by Blackboard, and we will discuss half of them on Wednesday the 14th and the other half on Wednesday the 21st.

After finishing with the discussion of your two page story, we will begin to look at your other work, according to the schedule handed out today, with a published story included to be read on Thursdays.

This will leave 6 days at the end of the semester, and for five of those days we will look at revisions of one of the stories you have done during the class. If there is room for an exercise while we are doing this, I will include that, too.

So, to sum up, on the first day of class we will introduce ourselves and talk about a two page story I will hand out.

On Wednesday, the 14th, and Wednesday the 21st, we will discuss the two page stories that you do and email to us by way of Blackboard.

From Monday, January 26th to Monday, April 6th, we will look, in each class, at stories from two of you, and on most Thursdays we will read a published story.

From Wednesday, April 8th to Wednesday April 22nd we will look at revisions you do of the stories you have written, four of these for each class. If we have time, during the discussions of revisions, I will include some short exercises.

We will have a conclusion on April 27th, the last class.

There is one thing you must do. If you sign up to send a story to the class, you must do so. If you can’t, then you must contact me, and not just before the story is due, but as much in advance as possible. Then I will come up with something else for us to do.

Handouts

Blackboard

Two Page Story