Fall 2013
English 261: Craft of Fiction
Dante 320; ext. 8016
Office Hours: TTh 4:45-5:45; W 3-4
And by appointment
Professor Rosemary Graham
rgraham@stmarys-ca.edu
Beyond Setting: Locating Character in Time and Place
“The writer operates at a peculiar crossroads where time and place and eternity somehow
meet. His problem is to find that location.” Flannery O’Connor, Mystery and Manners
This course will give you the opportunity to focus on two of the three parts of
O’Connor’s famous “peculiar crossroads.” Weekly readings will guide weekly
experiments in which you will be encouraged to take your fiction into unexplored
territory: other decades, other continents as well as the here and now.
Texts:
Frank O’Connor, Complete Stories
Peter Behrens, The O’Briens
Ellen Sussman, Paradise Guest House
Jennifer Egan, A Visit from the Goon Squad
Joan Silber, The Art of Time in Fiction: As Long As It Takes
Requirements: Weekly informal written responses to the reading and weekly 2 pp.
experiments, one of which to be expanded into a 15-20-page story or novel excerpt.
Attendance, active participation in lively class discussion.
Attendance Policy: You should not miss class except for illness and other unavoidables.
Please do not schedule job interviews, dentist appointments, weddings (or wedding dress
fittings, cake tastings, etc.) during our class time. Excessive absence (more than two) may
result in your not passing the course.
Cell phone policy: Silenced, out of sight.
Official Learning Outcomes for English 261, Craft of Fiction
In this course, students will:
 read fiction with attention to the techniques writers use to create place and
manipulate time
 create original fiction using these and other techniques to create place and
manipulate time
 relate the content of the course to their own fiction and to the practice of writing
fiction in our time
September
3 Read: Eudora Welty “Place in Fiction”; “Why I Live at the P.O.,” and “Petrified Man.”
Isolate two or three points in Welty’s stories where “the place in which [they happen] is
accepted as true.” Bring to class: One (xeroxed) page of fiction where, for you as a
reader, “The moment the place in which the novel happens is accepted as true.” Annotate
the text, underlining or highlighting the words, phrases, images, etc. that make you
“accept the place as true.” Write: a brief paragraph or two about the passage as
preparation for presenting it in class.
5 Read (and re-read) “Guests of the Nation” in Frank O’Connor’s Collected Stories,
paying particular attention to the various spaces the characters move through in its 12
pages. Make a list of the different spaces. Then identify what we know about each and
note how we know what we know. Write: No more than three paragraphs in which at
least three characters move among exactly three rooms.
10 Read: “Bridal Night” and “The Majesty of the Law” in our O’Connor reader,
focusing on physical detail. How does O’Connor render the physical worlds of these
characters? What makes us “accept as true” the lie of seaside cottage in “Bridal Night”
and Dan Bride’s cottage in “Majesty”?
12 Write: a scene modeled on opening of “The Majesty of the Law” where the police
sergeant enters Dan’s domestic space. Let the details of the dwelling spark revelations
about the person whose space is being entered, the relationship between that person and
the visitor, and let the conversation suggest—without revealing explicitly—something of
the reason for the visit.
17 Read “News for the Church” and “First Confession.” How does O’Connor use the
different sides of the confessional?
19 Write a two-character scene where the point of view character either reveals or hears
some kind of confession or secret. Pay as much attention to creating a real space as to the
dialogue spoken.
24 Read “Uprooted.” How does O’Connor move between city and country, mainland and
island? Isolate three passages in the text where Ned Keating perceives these three
locales. Write A paragraph or two unpacking one of your selected passages.
26 Write two paragraphs using either a character you are already familiar with or a new
one. One paragraph should begin “It was night(fall) when (he/she/they) reached home.)”
and the second should begin “Nothing was changed . . .” Your character is returning
home after having definitively left. How he or she sees the old domestic space should tell
us something about his or her emotional state.
October
1 Read “Babes in the Woods,” and “The American Wife.” Isolate one passage in each
story where O’Connor’s depiction of physical space communicates something vital about
cultural space.
3 Write a companion piece to any of the prompts you’ve produced so far using physical
space to convey something about cultural space. You might make this piece about a
character you’ve already depicted, but at the a distinctly different time in his/her life (the
future or the past). Or you might make the point-of-view character someone whom the
original point-of-view character encountered or remembered or otherwise engaged with
in your original.
8 Read to p. 96 in The Obriens. Keeping in mind what Welty said about Place in
Fiction, note as you read (and re-read) how Behrens re-creates these events of the early
twentieth century for a twenty-first-century audience. Pay special attention to language
and word choice. How does he make his characters’ thoughts and words believable for
their time and to ours? Choose a passage you find particularly effective in transporting us
through time and write a paragraph or two about it.
10 Read the first half of The Art of Time in Fiction. Bring to class the names of three
(in)famous (non-psychotic) historical figures with brief accounts of their (mis or heroic)
deeds and a list of three historical events you might explore through fictional characters.
Have at least one be from a place other than the U.S. In class we will discuss the
possibilities these figures’ lives and/or events present for fiction. Start researching. (We’ll
discuss resources a bit.)
15 Read to p. 175. in O’Briens. Behrens makes huge leaps in time in these pages. How
does he do this? How do the devices he uses—letters, telegrams, etc.—function? Isolate
and be prepared to explicate in discussion two or three passages where present and past
meet.
17 Use your research to write two (2 ish page) scenes depicting your historical figures/
witnesses to history engaged in a daily activity while also introducing plot possibilities.
Include a list of sources. Read the second half of The Art of Time in Fiction.
22 Read to p. 259 in The O’Briens, continue focusing on Behrens’ handling of time.
October 24 No Class.
29 Read to p. 321 The O’Briens, continuing to focus on how Behrens moves his
characters through time. How does he manage to cover so much ground and at the same
time bring his characters to vivid life? Pick a passage where Behrens is doing both things
and write two paragraphs about it.
31 Create 3 documents that you could use as devices to move your characters through
time. Brownie points for execution.
November
5 Read to the end of The O’Briens. Let’s continue talking about the techniques we’ve
been following and also think about how final episode functions.
7 Write two to three paragraphs placing your historical character in a strange place.
8 Read to p. 91 of A Visit from the Goon Squad. Put the events in this section of the
novel on a time line. Then outline its page-by-page, chapter-by-chapter structure.
10 Using the first two sections as a model, write two episodes in a character’s life,
separated by years. Write and present the older character first.
15 Read 92-186. In this portion of the novel, Egan continues to cut back and forth and
sideways through time. How do the experiments with form further her enterprise?
17 Experiment with form. Using a character you’ve already worked with this semester,
figure out a way to get at something about him/her you otherwise couldn’t using more
conventional narrative. You may borrow, as Egan does, from journalism
26 Finish Goon Squad.
Read The Paradise Guest House over Thanksgiving Break.
December
3 TBA
5 TBA
Exam week:Turn in 15-20 pp. of fiction based on any exercise you’ve done this term.