Creating Short Fiction

HUAS 6395.21

Lecturer: Tony Daniel

darkestcoffee@gmail.com
(NOTE: all e-mail must come to me from your UTD account.)
(214) 677-5750
Office hours and additional contact info will be provided at first class meeting.

COURSE DESCRIPTION

In this course, we’re going to write. Everything we do will be directed toward each
student turning out a minimum number of words each week of sufficient quality to have
several short stories or novel chapters in the making by term’s end. We’ll discuss the
elements of fiction – character, plot, setting, voice, tone, theme, etc. – as a means to the
end of writing. In addition to issues of art and craft, we’ll also touch on the business of
writing.

The class period will usually be divided into two segments, and both will be highly
participatory. We’ll normally begin with talk and discussion, then workshop individual
writing. Students will be required to make copies of their work at their own expense for
distribution to the class, so budget that in and become friendly with the UTD print shop
(if you haven’t already). Student attendance and preparation are necessary for the class
to function, so expect to spend several weekly hours outside of class reading the work of
others as well as writing your own fiction. With sufficient engagement, the course
should prove an excellent tool for the journeyman fiction writer to use to improve his or
her work and reach a new plateau on his or her professional path.

GRADES

You will be expected to write a minimum of 2,500 words each week. That’s about ten
double-spaced pages. In addition, you’ll turn in several revised drafts of different short
stories or novel chapters over the course of the term after workshopping them with the
class. Here’s the breakdown:

• 70% original work.

• 25% critique of the work of others.
• 5% writing exercises.

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70 % ORIGINAL WORK, INCLUDING:

35 % MINIMUM WORD REQUIREMENT

The course will revolve around students steadily producing fiction during the whole of
the term and working this raw material into stories or novel chapters. In order to produce
the amount of words required, a good strategy is to write about five hundred words a day
during a five-day week. Saving one’s “words” up until the night before class is not a
good strategy. While professional fiction writers have many methods to obtain
production from themselves, the “slow and steady” approach is one with which every
budding fiction writer should experiment – and this term will be your chance to do so.

• 2,500 minimum words per week. No maximum. These by no means have to be

polished and complete works, but had better not be “I can’t think of anything to
write” set down 358 times). It also must be fiction, not a journal entry, or
personal essay.

o Late doesn’t count.

o Partials count in 500-word increments. Round down.
o Unless this is a completed story for workshopping, you only need to print
these out for the instructor, not the entire class.
o Minimum wordage submissions should be formatted like a story
submission, with a title and your by-line (see below).
o If your weekly words are an addition to a story you’ve been working on,
print out the entire story and indicate where the new wordage begins in
this by centering on its own line just before the newest addition in this
manner: “((X,XXX NEW WORDS)),” where X,XXX is the word count.
o I’m quite good at estimating wordage at a glance, so don’t cheat the
margins in hope that I won’t notice.
o Remember, only the instructor will see your weekly words, so don’t panic
if you have a block that week and they are not your most stellar work.

WHY THE SEEMINGLY ARBITRARY QUANTITY REQUIREMENT?

Why not, instead, concentrate on a single silver bullet story all term? Isn’t quality far
more important than quantity?

Of course it is. There are two answers. First, the course is not geared toward producing
immediately publishable work. It is intended to make you a better writer by pushing you
on your weaknesses and working to further develop your strengths. Second, more than
one highly-regarded writer has noted that it often takes one million words or a war in
order to get good and to be able to summon one’s talent on command. Let us avoid going
into battle and concentrate on getting the requisite writing under our belts.

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THE WEEKLY WORDAGE EXCEPTIONS

On weeks when you:

• Turn in first draft of short story or novel chapter: no weekly words needed.
• Turn in revised draft of workshopped story: Counts as 1,500 words. 1,000 more
weekly words (about four pages) needed. HINT: a good way to start your next
story.

35% REVISED DRAFTS

• To be turned in over the course of the term, usually the week following its
workshop critique. Exceptions can be arranged for works over 6,500 words in
length.
• IMPORTANT: Revised drafts count 1,500 words toward your 2,500 weekly
words. You still have to do 1,000 additional words (about four pages) for the
weeks on which you turn in a revised draft.

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THE FIRST DRAFT STORY OR CHAPTER FOR WORKSHOP

• These must be photocopied and distributed to the class the week prior to
workshopping.
• Although first drafts aren’t evaluated as part of your grade, in order to get to a
revised draft -- which is -- you obviously have to have had a story workshopped
the week before. The whole point of the instructor’s not grading first drafts is for
you to turn something in without feeling it must be at an advanced stage of
completion.
• We will establish a schedule for individual student story or chapter due dates at
the first class meeting.
• In general, expect to turn in a story every two to three weeks.

FORMAT FOR STORIES OR CHAPTERS

• All stories or novel chapters should be double-spaced and presented in twelve

point Courier or Times New Roman type. Please avoid ten point type.
• Right hand margin should be unjustified and set at 6.5 inches.
• Center, italicize and bold title. Center by-line under it. Triple-space and begin
story.
• Indent paragraph first sentences, and do not triple- or quadruple-space between
paragraphs. This is neither a business document nor an academic report.
• Pages should be numbered in some non-handwritten fashion.
• Stories or novel chapters should be stapled or paper-clipped.
• Photocopies may not be double-sided.
• Everything must be crisp and legible.
• Be sure that all grammatical inconsistencies and misspelled words are deliberate
on your part.

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ADDITIONAL NOTES

• Stories or chapters probably should be, but are not required to be, developed from
your 2,500 weekly words.
• Turning in a short story or novel chapter counts as your weekly wordage for that
week -- unless it is merely a slight reworking of previous work and obviously
didn’t require much additional effort. I’ll know. If so, then treat it as a revision
and turn in an additional 1,000 weekly words (about four pages).

25% CRITIQUE OF OTHERS

We’ll discuss how to workshop the fiction of others in some detail. Here are three
important things to remember:

THE WORKSHOP

• Look for what the other person is trying to do with his or her story, and help
him or her do it better. Do no ask another writer to rewrite or re-conceive his
or her work as you would have written it.

• When you critique the work of others, you are teaching yourself how to write
better. By dissecting somebody else’s fiction, you are learning how to take a
more objective editorial eye to your own. Every moment you spend critiquing
another’s fiction, however disagreeably bad or brilliant you may think that
work to be, is simultaneously time well-spent developing your own work.

• Workshopping is a proven method that has turned out many fine professional
writers – many of whom swear by it. Sounds perhaps like the promise of a
weight loss program, but if you thoroughly engage yourself the process has a
multiplying effect that can take years off the time it will take you to develop
as a professional writer.

5% WRITING EXERCISES

These will often be individually determined, and some will be timed and in-class. If your
longhand is illegible, then consider bringing a laptop equipped with a disk or CD burner
to every class, along with appropriate media. The exercises may include: structural
imitation exercises, paragraph transition development, work in other styles than your
own, and, generally, exercises aimed at the development of the various building blocks of
fictional narrative.

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FURTHER NOTES ON GRADING AND EVALUATION

• Obviously, you cannot pass the course without turning in completed revised
drafts. How many will depend on how long your short stories or novel chapters
turn out to be. I’ll expect an average of three to five works from each student,
with a minimum of two.

• There is no penalty, and every opportunity, for you to write more than is required.
We’ll all read it. A novelist might conceivably look at the course as a way to
complete a first draft. An ambitious short story writer might try to have eight to
ten stories of average length in revised draft by term’s end. Both are extreme, but
possible goals. But a caution: finishing what you start is far more important than
indiscriminate production. And working to improve your craft is what the course
is all about, and the main factor upon which your grade will be based. All other
considerations, however laudable, should be secondary.

REQUIRED TEXTS

• Creating Short Fiction, Damon Knight

• Characters and Viewpoint, Orson Scott Card

These are the writing books I started out with in the long-ago-dim-time, and I’ve never
run across anything better. In addition, we’ll look at various examples of fiction by
several authors past and present. I’ll either place these on reserve at the library or
provide PDFs on-line. Again, lots of reading in this course – always with an eye toward
developing your writing.

ACADEMIC POLICIES

• Students with disabilities should find a way to use this resource in their writing!
Contact Kerry Tate of Disability Services at (972) 833-2098 if you need any
accommodation in order to attend class.

• Plagiarism or aiding and abetting plagiarism is impossible to get away with in a

fiction writing course. Violators will be shamed on national television by Oprah.
Plagiarism is, in fact, serious business and will result in severe academic
disciplinary action.

• Information in this syllabus is subject to change at the discretion of the instructor.

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CODICIL

• IMPORTANT: On the last day of class, please provide me with a self-addressed

envelope stamped with the appropriate postage (weigh envelope and story
together on a postal scale and affix the right amount of stamps to make it first
class) so that I can return you final submissions with notes. Information on how
to figure this can be found at: http://postcalc.usps.gov/.