Introduces creative nonfiction and the writing of essays using creative techniques, such as personal narrative, memoir, nature and travel writing, and literary journalism. Explores the works of established writers for forms, techniques and styles as a context for the production of creative nonfiction for class discussion and analysis.
Students who are candidates for WR 240 should possess writing skills to the degree that mechanical errors and organizational problems are minimal, allowing them to experiment and develop their craft from sentence level to a finished, publishable piece of writing.
Upon successful completion students should be able to:
- Read a wide range of established creative nonfiction writers to learn techniques demonstrated in their work.
- Employ creative writing techniques drawn from fiction, poetry, and scriptwriting, such as characterization, setting, descriptive detail, concreteness, dialogue, flashbacks, juxtaposition, metaphor, voice, tone, formality and informality; alternate narrative summary and scene.
- Use self-reflection and techniques for employing the imagination to generate new essays and then to revise the essays, using techniques for “re-entering” or “re-seeing” a piece of writing.
- Use critical thinking and problem solving to critique others' poems and communicate suggestions about strengths and weaknesses of drafts to peers.
- Engage subjects by participating directly in the action being written about, such as by doing in-depth in-person interviews or designing an experience, and then pursuing the experience with the foreknowledge that the experience will constitute the basis of an essay.
This course fulfills the following GE requirements: Arts and Letters/AAOT, Arts and Letters/AS, Arts and Letters/AAS, Arts and Letters/AGS, Arts and Letters/ASOT-B.