Tallinn Summer School 2015
The programme is supported by the British
Council, Tallinn
The programme may be subject to minor changes
Title: Elements of Fiction: The Theory and Practice of the Novel, with author Giles
Foden
Description: This course provides students with appropriate creative, critical and practical skills for resolving literary and professional tasks within the field of fiction, with an emphasis on dramatic narrative. It aims to prepare them for the professional writing life, mixing literary theory, critical concepts and craft knowledge with practical advice. It works through a series of mini-lectures by the tutor, student interactions, alongside workshops in which students’ own creative work is analysed. The course contains some aspects of a traditional theory of the novel course but challenges the assumptions of these in a way that is closer to the uncertain processes actually involved in writing a novel. NB Students should either arrive with or produce during the course of the week a piece of fictional prose of between 1500 and 3000 words, which will be the subject of workshops and presented in the final showcase.
Room: M–649 (MARE, 5 Uus-Sadama)
Friday, 24 July
9:00–12:30 Registration. Lobby, 5 Uus-Sadama
13:00 –14:00 Introduction: beginnings
Beginnings and endings, notebooks, journals and diaries, writer's block, a writer’s reference library, good habits and bad ones. Finding your territory. How to develop ideas.
Originality, creativity and intertextuality. The intentional fallacy. What is an author?
What does it mean to a practising writer to believe ‘the author is dead’? Using Roget’s and the OED. General orientations. ASSIGNMENTS FOR WORKSHOPS.
Lunch break
14:30– 16:00 Session 1: style and language
What is style? How many kind of style are there? Is realism a style? Description, expositions, narration. Can writing be too stylish? Waging war on cliché. Figurative language. What is an image? How does metaphorical language work? What are our personal metaphorical constructs? Metaphor versus metonymy. Dialogue versus description.
16:00 – 17:30 : Public Lecture Room: M-218
Looking Back Without Nostalgia: Late Socialism Remembered by Catriona Kelly (University of Oxford)

Saturday, 25 July
9:00–10:30 Session 2: consciousness and character
What do we mean by character? What is the difference between character, type and archetype? Is character destiny? How do you create personality in fiction? What is the difference between major and minor characters/two-dimensional and three-dimensional characters? Essential versus existential. Broad strokes versus fine detail. Do characters have to be interesting? Sympathetic? Believable? Traits, tags and tics. ‘The reversal of the obvious’ (Graham Greene). Consciousness (and the subconscious). Ideas of consciousness and the self in science and literature. How can narrative techniques represent inner experience? Stream of consciousness, interior monologue etc. The fragmentary nature of memory
Coffee/tea break
10:45–12:15 Session 3: time and place
How does time get into poetry and prose? Clock time versus fictional time. The relationship between time and narrative structure/rhythm. Before the beginning, after the end. The eternal present. What place has place in literature? How is place bound up with feeling and experience? Writing about real places in fiction: entering into and keeping an agreement with the reader. Place as familiar and as exotic. Place as character. Place as an invention or fantasy.
Lunch break
13:00–14:30 Writing time
Sunday, 26 July
11:00–12:30 Session 4: stories, plots, narratives
The nature of tragic drama. Dramatic form. The nature of a dramatic plot. Tragedy and pathos. How do we tell stories? What forms have historically been used to tell stories?
What might useful forms and devices be? Borrowing other forms of narrative from other disciplines. The structures of narratives. What is narratology? Bildungsroman. Are there really only seven basic plots? How to structure. Heroes and heroines.
Lunch break
14:00–15.30 Session 5: voice and point of view
Who speaks, who sees and why? The narrator and the author as one or as two?
‘Unreliable’ narration. Polyphonic narrative. Embodied perception. The deictic shift.
Implied authors and assumed readers.
Coffee/tea break
15:45 – 16:45 Writing time
___________________________________________________________________________

Monday, 27 July
9:00–10:30 Session 6: the sublime, the beautiful and the generic
Burke on the Sublime. Burke’s theory of the passions. The relationship of the sublime and the beautiful. The creation of sublime effects in literature. The influence of the sublime on Gothic literature. The pleasures of terror. The pleasures of other genres: comedy, satire, the thriller etc. Approaches to a marketplace.
Coffee/tea break
10:45–12:15 Session 7: The professional writer
Back to note-taking. Research. Writing proposals. Contracts. Permissions. Agents, publishers and booksellers. Publicity. Tax. Manuscripts and proofs. The editing process.
Writing catalogue entries and blurbs. Libel and plagiarism. Dealing with the film and TV industry. Self-promotion and reticence. Talking about your work.
TUESDAY WORKSHOP ASSIGNMENTS TO BE HANDED IN DURING THIS SESSION
Lunch break
13:00–14:00 Reading time (workshop materials)
14:00 – 15:30 : Public Lecture Room M-218
All You Need Is Love: How the Soviet Hippies Lived Through, with and despite Stagnation by Juliane Fürst (University of Bristol)
Tuesday, 28 July
9:00–10:30 Workshop
Coffee/tea break
10:45–12:15 Workshop
WEDNESDAY WORKSHOP ASSIGNMENTS TO BE HANDED IN DURING THIS
SESSION
Lunch break
13:00–14:00 Reading time (workshop materials)
16:00 – 17:30 Room M-134. An Afternoon with Giles Foden: Reflections on a Life In
Writing, with a reading from his new novel Aquifer

Wednesday, 29 July
9:00–10:30 Workshop
C offee/tea break
10:45–12:15 Workshop
THURSDAY WORKSHOP ASSIGNMENTS TO BE HANDED IN DURING THIS
SESSION
Lunch break
13:00–14:00 Reading time (workshop materials)
14:00 – 16:00 Room N-406. Afternoon with an Estonian film “In the Crosswind”
(“Risttuules”)
Thursday, 30 July Room M-648
9:00–10:30 Workshop
Coffee/tea break
10:45–12:15 Workshop
Lunch break
13:00–14:00 Writing time: final revisions
16:00 – 17:30 : Public Lecture Room M-218
Should I Stay or Should I Go? Finding a Niche in Late Soviet Literature by Polly Jones
(University of Oxford)
___________________________________________________________________________
Friday, 31 July Room M-649
10:00–11:40 Participants present their work
11:40–13:20 Participants present their work

13:20 – 14:00 Discussion and feedback
16:30 – 17:30 Screening of Shortfilm course films Room N-406
18:00 – 20:30 Closing event TBC
Requirements:
Bring your laptops for writing and contact, notebooks plus loose paper, folder for handouts, etc.
Active participation in workshops and discussions is required. At the end of the course participants are expected to present a selection of creative pieces before the group and submit a portfolio.
The language of the course is English (Level: advanced to proficiency level of English).
The course offers academic credit (upon full participation and completion of the course – 3
ECTS).
Krista Mits ( Course programme) mits@tlu.ee
, or krista@ehi.ee
Tallinn Summer and Winter Schools (Registration, cultural programme) tss@tlu.ee
Office: Room T217 (25, Narva Rd.)
Homepage: Tallinn Summer School http://summerschool.tlu.ee
Giles Foden was born in Warwickshire in 1967 but grew up mostly in Africa. He was
Harper-Wood Student in Creative Writing at St John’s College, Cambridge 1989-90. In 1993 he became assistant editor of the Times Literary Supplement . Between 1996 and 2006 he worked on the books pages of the Guardian , during which period he published his debut novel The Last King of Scotland , which won the 1998 Whitbread First Novel Award and was later made into an Oscar-winning film. He is author of three other novels — Ladysmith ,
Zanzibar and Turbulence — and a work of non-fiction, Mimi and Toutou Go Forth . He holds professorships of creative writing at the University of East Anglia in Britain and the
University of Limerick, Ireland. His new novel Aquifer will be published next year.