Fact to Fiction

  JY17-F41 Are you a budding writer looking for inspiration? Step outside, turn on the news, open a magazine, read your Facebook or Twitter feed. This course is fertile ground to turn the real world into a fictional realm, your hometown or dream locale into a setting, the people around you into characters, and tidbits into plots. Every writer does it, which is proof that it works, but it requires a combination of ethics, instinct, and craft. We will mine the public world, our private lives, as well as the past, for ways into character and conflict. Students will have homework: to read a piece of work each night (by writers like Robert Olen Butler, Joyce Carol Oates, and Pam Houston) and write for an hour a night. Class work will consist of story discussions, in-class prompts, and peer review. By the end of the week, students will have composed a solid piece of fiction and compiled a slew of ideas for future stories.   If you would like to make a request for an accommodation, please email us at accommodation@wab.org at least 10 days prior to the event.