Interdisciplinary Arts 0118 - The Power of POV: Exploring Narrative Options in Writing the Short Story

When crafting short stories, a writer makes the crucial choice of what point of view to utilize. This decision is monumental as POV is the prism through which the world of the story takes form. When moving between POVs, any story is reconfigured, altering all other aspects of storytelling craft. Our class will experiment with writing short fiction as we wrestle with the following POV questions: Who's telling the story? How is it being told? How does that choice impact our understanding of the events? How does this illuminate or obscure the lives of our characters? We will read and discuss the work of accomplished writers of the short story form. To explore the practice, we will also engage in short writing prompts designed to help us write our first short stories, and we will share work together, to discuss our growing understanding and control of the craft. Keywords:Creative Writing, Fiction, Workshop, Short Story

Students should expect to spend 8 hours weekly on work and preparation outside of class time