3.0

credits

Average Course Rating

This craft elective is meant primarily for fiction writers, especially those writing or wishing to write historical fiction. The course offers an intensive focus on a writer’s analysis of historical fiction – short stories, novellas, and novels – and includes a close examination of historical fiction writing techniques, as well as methodologies for conducting background research using primary and secondary sources. Topics include definitions of historical fiction; research methodologies; and the uses, in the crafting of historical fiction, of point of view, voice and style, characterization, dialogue, setting, form, and structure (including the Aristotelian Arc, Freytag’s Pyramid, and experimental models, as well as the uses of scene vs summary, present action and backstory, and their effects on pacing). Class assignments include response writings to assigned readings by contemporary, diverse practitioners of historical fiction; original fiction written by students; and oral presentations. Readings include works of historical fiction, representing a range of forms from short stories to novellas to novels and a variety of aesthetic approaches. Readings might also include books or essays on the craft of fiction writing.