English 245 - Worldbuilding: Topics in Reading and Writing Creative Fiction: The Landscape and Cityscapes of Creative Fiction

Whether in fantasy or more mainstream narratives, storylines evolve in a carefully constructed world space. Imaginary settings—whether they be Narnia or New York— involve the creation of spatially coherent locations, a backstory and a world that is peopled.In this course, students examine fictional worlds and learn to build those worlds themselves.This class is not limited to but is recommended for students interested in fantasy, science fiction or speculative fiction: In this course, we explore the constructed worlds made by some wonderful writers and build fictional worlds of our own. The course involves both in-class participation and a great deal of writing: short stories, worldbuilding exercises, writing about reading. Each week, we read the fiction published in that week's edition of "The New Yorker."