Hi everyone, if you’re interested in a fiction foundations writing class, or know someone who might be looking to get into a fiction writing class at the University of Washington Continuum in the not-for-credit program please see below and contact me if you have any questions at: sdriscol@uw.edu.

UW Continuum, Fall 2024

WRI FIC 101 A; Reg # 218973

Instructor: Scott Driscoll          Phone: 206-782-8587               Email: sdriscol@uw.edu

Tuesday 6:00-9:00   10/1 to 12/03, 2024         Class Location: on Zoom plus one session on UW Seattle campus, Week 5, Tues 10/29/2024

COURSE DESCRIPTION

This ten-week course is designed to explore fiction writing as craft.  We will cover points of technique and you will learn: how to do essential worldbuilding; how to establish dramatic situation using an inciting incident to disturb an ordinary world; how to build plot structure to a dramatic climax with a reversal; character development basics including how to recognize roles in the story’s culture; the essentials of point-of-view; and overall how to manage the narrative. We will read and discuss stories, and do occasional “sudden writings” in class to practice technique. You’ll be given opportunities to bring in your own work for workshopping.  In the final two weeks, all participants will be expected to workshop a story (or chapter).

.REQUIRED TEXTS

Writing Fiction: A guide to Narrative Craft, 10th ed., by Burroway, Janet and Elizabeth Stuckey-French, University of Chicago Press, 2019, Paperback: ISBN: 9780226616698.

Wonderbook, The Illustrtive Guide to Creating Imaginative Fiction, 2018 edition, by Jeff Vandermeer, Abrams Image: ISBN: 9781419729669.

The Best American Short Stories 2023, by Min Jin Lee, Houghton, Mifflin Harcourt, ISBN: 9780063275904.

HOW TO REGISTER:

To register, go to the UW Continuum web page for writing classes, https://www.pce.uw.edu/courses/fiction-writing-craft, and scroll to the bottom.

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By the end of winter class, everyone, including those working on a novel, on stories, or on creative nonfiction will have a chance to workshop up to 40 pages. We will hold one major workshop session in the final two weeks of the winter quarter. Those who want more feedback are encouraged to sign up for workshopping in the earlier weeks as well.

Required winter texts: 1) The Art of Character by David Corbett, ISBN: 9780143121572; 2) The Compass of Character. also by David Corbett, ISBN: 9781440300868; 3) Women Who Run With The Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Ballentine Books, ISBN: 9780345396815; 4) Story by Robert McKee, ISBN: 9780060391683; 5) The Heroine’s Journey: For Writers, Readers, and Fans of Pop Culture, by Gail Carriger, ISBN: 1944751343 (paperback, first edition, Oct. 2020); 6) Beautiful World, Where Are You, a novel by Sally Rooney, the 2021 first edition, ISBN: 9780374602604; and 7) Best American Short Stories 2020, Mariner Books, ISBN: 9781328485373.

Class meets: 10 Thursdays, 6:30-9:00 p.m., Jan. 6, 2022 through Mar. 10, 2022.

Where?: Zoom at this link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/9382008852.

Cost: $490

To reserve a spot in the Winter Advanced Writing course, please mail a deposit of $50 to Scott Driscoll, 7716 Dayton Ave. N., Seattle, WA 98103.  The deposit will be deducted from the course fee.  Early sign-up is encouraged.  Please send me an email at sdriscol@uw.edu to confirm that you are planning to sign up.

Our main text in this class.

The winter class will focus on character. We will examine how characters present in scene and then evolve with purpose in the longer story arc. We will compare the amount of exterior action in scene required of characters in popular genres to the degree of interiority expected of characters in literary genres. We will explore subtext, the “thing beneath the thing,” (Corbett). We will “peel away the mask” that characters wear and look at their repressed desires, needs, wants, fears, and hidden secrets and wounds and the dark side of the maladaptive behavior they exhibit to cope. We will compare the archetypal characters in a hero’s journey to the heroine’s journey more commonly used in many pop culture novels. Finally, we will talk about how characters achieve “reversals” and the tolerance for ambiguity in literary genres versus the demand for closure in pop fiction genres.

Offers characters alternatives to the hero’s journey.

.By the end of winter class, everyone working on a novel or book-length creative nonfiction manuscript will have had a chance to workshop up to 40 pages. Stories and creative nonfiction essays and memoirs are also acceptable. We will hold one major workshop session in the final two weeks of the winter quarter. Those who want more feedback are encouraged to sign up for workshopping in the earlier weeks as well.

A character-based novel.

One of the best resources available.

Required winter texts: 1) The Art of Character by David Corbett, ISBN: 9780143121572; 2) Scene & Structure by Jack Bickham, ISBN: 9780898799064; 3) Story by Robert McKee, ISBN: 9780060391683; 4) The Heroine’s Journey: For Writers, Readers, and Fans of Pop Culture, by Gail Carriger, ISBN: 1944751343 (paperback, first edition, Oct. 2020); 5) Dogeaters, a novel by Jessica Hagedorn, the 1990 paperback edition, ISBN: 9780140149043; and 6) Best American Short Stories 2019, Mariner Books, ISBN: 9781328484246.

Recommended winter text: Women Who Run With The Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Ballentine Books, ISBN: 9780345396815.

Great tales with female archetypes.

Class meets: 10 Thursdays, 6:30-9:00 p.m., Jan. 7, 2021 through Mar. 11, 2021.

Where?: Zoom at this link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/9382008852.

Cost: $490

To reserve a spot in the Winter Advanced Writing course, please mail a deposit of $50 to Scott Driscoll, 7716 Dayton Ave. N., Seattle, WA 98103.  The deposit will be deducted from the course fee.  Early sign-up is encouraged.  Please send me an email at sdriscol@uw.edu to confirm that you are planning to sign up.

Thanks.  Hope to see you this winter.  Scott

You probably didn’t wish for an inciting incident, like this coronavirus,  to come along and disturb your world, but it did. Here it is. Here we are.  Taking a writing class, or any class that promotes creative expression in this disturbing time, could help you feel you’ve recovered some agency over a world that can feel like it’s slipping out of your control.  This Zoom writing class is geared toward taking that need for story telling and giving it the form and structure it needs in order to lend meaning to events and purpose to characters.

“Without playing with fantasy, no creative work has ever come to birth,” claims Karl Jung. Who would dare to disagree. But, I would caution, without taking that fantasy and pressing it into a form with structure, the story you want to tell will remain just that: a lovely fantasy. The goal of this fall advanced writing course is to promote the use of a story structure  common to most genres. We will then divide that structure into five focuses especially well suited to building a novel.

The fall class will be divided into three parts. In part one, we will look at how to do world building and control narrative distance. This section will include nonfiction realism and realism as it applies to fantasy worlds, and will look at the connection between exterior places and events and the interior life of the characters. In part two, we will look at a few non-linear or modular forms of storytelling (for those who want to experiment with writing plotless stories or essays). In part three, (the bulk of the quarter), we will learn how to apply Franklin’s five-focus story structure to the organization of a novel. We will also consider how to pack stories and essays and novels with more urgency and suspense, and how to push characters to higher levels of risk while raising stakes.

Participants will have a chance to workshop up to 40 pages. The winter follow-up class will focus on character and scene. The spring class on language and rewriting. My goal is to have everyone who stays for three quarters to workshop up to 120 pages.

John Berger Author of Fortunate Country Doctor

Margaret Atwood Author of Alias Grace

Jon Franklin’s text

Madison Smartt Bell’s text

Margaret Atwood’s novel

Required fall texts: 1) Writing For Story by Jon Franklin, a Plume Book, 9780452272958; 2) Narrative Design by Madison Smartt Bell, W.W. Norton, 0393320219; 3) A Fortunate Man: the Story of a Country Doctor by John Berger; Vintage International Books, 1967; ISBN: 9870679737261; 4) Wonderbook by Jeff Vandermeer, Abrams Image, 2018, ISBN: 9781419729669; 5) Best American Short Stories 2019, Mariner Books, 9781328484246; 6) and Alias Grace, a novel by Margaret Atwood, Anchor Books, 1996, ISBN: 9780385490443.

Class meets: 10 Thursdays, 7-9:30 p.m., Oct. 1 through Dec. 10 (week off for Thanksgiving.) (Class start time might be moved up to 6 or 6:30 PM.)

Where?: On Zoom for fall. (In winter or spring, class might return to the Phinney Neighborhood Center, 6532 Phinney Ave. N., Room 3, Building A.  Call (206) 783-2244 for directions.

Cost: $490

To reserve a spot in the Fall Advanced Writing course, please mail a deposit of $50 to Scott Driscoll, 7716 Dayton Ave. N., Seattle, WA 98103.  The deposit will be deducted from the course fee.  Early sign-up is encouraged.  Please send me an email at sdriscol@uw.edu to confirm that you are planning to sign up.

Thanks.  Hope to see you this fall.  Scott

1. FICTION WRITING: CHARACTER

UW Continuum Thursday Night Spring 2020

WRI FIC 103A Reg #: 182311

Instructor: Scott Driscoll

Phone: 206-782-8587

Location: UW Seattle Campus (Spring 2020 will be held on Zoom)

Meets: Thurs 4/2/2020 – 6/4/2020, 6-9 PM

Email: sdriscol@uw.edu

COURSE DESCRIPTION

The spring class will focus on “character” and “scene.”  We will begin by reducing character to a value mobilized by a “desire” to seek a “goal.” We will next make a comparison between the kind of archetypal characters that frequent some genre fiction to characters drawn from the author’s life, from the news, from history, and so on. We’ll spend time walking characters through dramatized scenes with an eye to using staging details to reveal the characters’ inner worlds.  Finally, we will talk about “reversals” and how they evolve differently in literary stories versus in popular fiction genres and we’ll consider how to use scene to design story structure.

REQUIRED TEXTS  

Story by Robert McKee, ISBN: 9780060391683; Women Who Run With Wolves by Clarisa Pinkola Estes, ISBN: 978034596815; The Writer’s Journey by Christopher Vogler, ISBN: 9781932907360; Reading Like A Writer by Francine Prose, ISBN: 9780060777050; A Man Called Ove a novel by Frederik Backman, ISBN: 9781476738024; and Best American Short Stories 2018, ISBN: 9780544582941.

EVALUATION AND GRADING:

Students earn 3 continuing education units for this course if they complete the course assignments, participate in workshopping, and attend a minimum of 8 out of 10 class sessions.  Attendance at all 10 sessions is recommended.

Texts are available for purchase at the University Bookstore.

HOW TO REGISTER:

To register, go to the UW Continuum web page for writing classes, https://www.pce.uw.edu/courses/fiction-writing-craft and scroll to the bottom.

2. Spring 2020 ADVANCED WRITING: VOICE, LANGUAGE, and REVISION

COURSE DESCRIPTION:

In literary as well as stand-out popular fiction, writers use language to do more than service plot. Successful writers spend time gathering words and will put a high value on deploying the accurate names of things and emotions and ephemeral effects. According to Italo Calvino, every writer should strive for precision in their use of language, or what he calls, “exactitude.” Still, stories do have to get told. This class will start with a look at language at the level of word, sentence, and paragraph. We will next go through a series of revision exercises aimed at discovering how character yearnings and inner worlds can be revealed using a mix of author and character voice to select just the right surface details, gestures, and atmospheric effects. Finally, we will look at best practices for revision, the roll-your-sleeves-up kind of work that takes your manuscript beyond inspiration and pushes it toward becoming a novel or story or essay worthy of submission.

This quarter you’ll have the chance to workshop up to about 50 pages. Class sessions will be about an even mix of craft discussions and workshopping. There is no requirement that you work on a novel. Stories and creative nonfiction and memoirs are acceptable as well.

Required spring texts: 1) Reading Like A Writer by Francine Prose, Harper Perennial 2006, ISBN: 9780060777050; 2) The Writer’s Portable Mentor by Priscilla Long, second edition, University of New Mexico Press, 2018, ISBN: 9780826360052; 3) From Where You Dream by Robert Olen Butler, Grove Press, 2005, ISBN: 9780802142573; 4) The Last Draft by Sandra Scofield, Penguin Books, 2017, ISBN: 9780143131359; 5) There There, a novel by Tommy Orange, Knopf, 2018, ISBN: 9780525520375; 6) The Cold Dish, a novel by Craig Johnson, Penguin, 2006 paperback edition, ISBN: 9780143123170; and 7) Best American Short Stories 2018, edited by Roxane Gay, Mariner Books, 9780544582941.

Class meets: 10 Tuesdays, 7-9:30 p.m., April 21, 2020 through June 23, 2020.                                   

Where?: On-line using a Zoom url or Google group; when available we will meet at the Phinney Neighborhood Center, 6532 Phinney Ave. N., Room 3, Building A (Blue Building main floor).  Call (206) 783-2244 for directions.

Cost: $490

HOW TO REGISTER:

To reserve a spot in the Phinney Neighborhood Center Spring Advanced Writing course, please mail a deposit of $50 to Scott Driscoll, 7716 Dayton Ave. N., Seattle, WA 98103.  The deposit will be deducted from the course fee.  Early sign-up is encouraged.  Please send me an email at sdriscol@uw.edu to confirm that you are planning to sign up.

3. THE ART OF WRITING

UW Continuum Wednesday Night Spring 2020

WRI 100 A Reg #: 182320

Instructor: Scott Driscoll

Phone: 206-782-8587

Location: UW Seattle Campus (Spring 2020 will be held on Zoom)

Meets: Wed 4/1/2020 – 6/3/2020, 6-9 PM

Email: sdriscol@uw.edu

COURSE DESCRIPTION

This class will explore the art of writing, starting with a look at what makes for good writing in any form and how to write from life. We will go from there to looking at: how to generate images and manage details to create a strong sense of realism; questions of voice, point of view, and word choice; how to write a creative nonfiction essay; how to write a story; how to present character; how to dramatize character in scene and get best use of dialogue; how to understand and control for style; and culminating in best revision practices. This course is designed for writers of creative nonfiction, including memoir and personal essays, as well as fiction (models drawn from stories rather than novels). Suitable for all levels. Emphasis will be on quality of writing more than on the particular demands of a given genre.

REQUIRED TEXTS 

What If?: Writing Exercises for Fiction Writers, the 2010 Third Edition by Anne Bernays and Pamela Painter, ISBN: 9780205616886; Imaginative Writing: The Elements of  Craft by Janet Burroway, Longman 2003, ISBN: 0321081919; Tell it Slant, by Brenda Miller and Suzanne Paola, McGraw Hill, 2012, ISBN: 9780071781770; and Steering the Craft 2^nd edition, by Ursula Le Guin, Houghton, Mifflin, Harcourt, 2015, ISBN: 9780544611610.

EVALUATION AND GRADING:

Students earn 3 continuing education units for this course if they complete the course assignments, participate in workshopping, and attend a minimum of 8 out of 10 class sessions.  Attendance at all 10 sessions is recommended.

Texts are available for purchase at the University Bookstore.

HOW TO REGISTER:

To register, go to the UW Continuum web page for writing classes, https://www.pce.uw.edu/courses/ and search for The Art of Writing.