English 296 Techniques of Fiction
Leslie Jamison
Fridays 1:10 - 4:00 pm, 305 Fiske
Office hours: Fridays 11am - 1pm, Downey 301
Contact Info: ljamison@wesleyan.edu or 203-589-9669
This course focuses on short stories: reading, analyzing, celebrating, dissecting, and
ultimately creating them. You’ll be reading a selection of stories from twentieth and
twenty-first century authors, and we’ll discuss these stories with an eye to issues of craft
and composition: beginnings, endings, character, plot, dialogue, exposition, setting, and
description. You’ll also be doing in-class writing exercises each week and longer takehome assignments; all serving as practice and inspiration for writing full-length stories that
we’ll workshop during the second half of the course. You’ll be reading and responding to
each other’s work as well as writing your own. My hope for the course is that you’ll leave
with a sense of writing as a process of labor and enchantment, beyond and indebted to
rigor, a process continually defying your imagination of what it might demand or offer.
I’ve outlined all the major components and logistics of the course below, but please feel
free to email me with any additional questions. For that matter, please feel free to email
about any issues during the course of the semester—receiving and answering emails makes
me feel busy and important.
Required Work
*Weekly in-class writing assignments
*Four take-home assignments.
*Two complete stories, one of them revised. At least one of these stories should grow from
one of your exercises or take-home assignments; both can, if you like.
*Two response papers about story collections.
*One response paper about a fiction reading or event.
Required Texts
Jesus’ Son, Denis Johnson
The Beggar Maid, Alice Munro
There will also be a course pack with additional readings. You can get a printed copy or
download it for free and print the stories yourself—but either way, I’d like you to bring a
copy of the stories we’re discussing to class rather than reading from your laptop.
Grading and Final Portfolio
Grading for this course will be based on your writing and your participation. Participation
doesn’t simply mean engaging with the exercises and discussions but also coming to class
prepared; and coming to class prepared means reading and thinking about the stories
beforehand—stories from published authors as well as stories by your peers. I expect all of
you to contribute actively to discussions; hopefully you are taking this class because that
prospect sounds appealing to you. Participation will account for approximately 30% of
your grade, your writing portfolio (the accumulation of your work across the semester) for
the other 70%. I won’t grade individual assignments or stories but will provide written
feedback on all of them—and more extensive written feedback, as well as a grade, on the
final portfolio. But if you want to get a sense of how you’re doing, by all means come talk
to me during office hours or send me an email. I won’t be grading your writing on its
“literary genius,” per se, but more on its inventiveness, its bravery, its energy, its ambition
(in short, its cojones), as well as its engagement with the craft topics of the course, and—
most importantly—its improvement and progression over the course of the semester.
The Final Portfolio will consist of:
*Four assignments
*Two stories (one of them revised, please include the first draft as well)
*Three response papers
Individual Meetings
I will hold office hours every Friday from 11am to 1pm. Please send me an email if you
are planning to come to office hours so that you aren’t kept waiting if I’m meeting with
another student. If you aren’t free between 11 and 1 on Fridays, send me an email and we
can figure something out. I’d like to meet with each one of you at least once during the
course of the semester, hopefully to talk about one of your longer stories, but I’m happy to
meet with you as many times as you’d like.
Further thoughts, nuts and bolts, miscellany
A few weeks into the course, once everything has settled down, I’ll pass around a
sign-up schedule for workshops later in the semester. Take careful note of the date you
choose. A week beforehand, you’ll be responsible for bringing 18 copies of your story to
class (one for me, and one for everyone else).
It is your responsibility to make sure you get your story distributed, and your
responsibility to obtain other peoples’ stories for each class. If for some reason you were
absent (see more below) or didn’t get the story, please email the author and figure out a
way to get a copy. I’d like you to read each story at least twice, and write down comments
in the margins and a more extensive note at the end—it doesn’t need to be a novel, but
should be thoughtful.
Note: Workshop logistics always sound more complicated than they actually are.
Note (2): You’ll see we are handling assignment and story distribution differently.
Assignments will get workshopped a few days in advance, while stories will be distributed
in hard copy the week before.
Absences: Please make every effort not to miss class. But if you have a medical or
personal situation, please let me know. I’m not a tyrant.
Readings: I will be announcing readings as they come up during the course of the
semester. I can tell you there will be readings many Wednesday nights at 8. Please come to
as many of them as you can.
Eating/Drinking/Fidgeting/Texting: Feel free to snack during class, but don’t go
crazy with it. Granola bars can be so loud. We’ll take one 15-minute break during each
session. Please turn off your cell phones! And I’d prefer no laptops in class.
Plagiarizing: Please don’t. Also, all course work must be your own, created for
this class, not for another class you took earlier or are taking now. This is not a research
course but in the case of using research sources for this course or any other, be very careful
to identify with proper citation all ideas and any direct wording taken from your sources.
If you are unsure, ask for help. Work not meeting these important guidelines will not
receive credit and cannot be made up.
If you have a disability and feel that you need accommodation to successfully
complete this course, please talk to me.
A few thoughts about class structure: In each class, we’ll be doing a number of different
things: in-class writing and brief discussion of in-class writing, talking about published
stories, and—most importantly—workshopping assignments and student stories. This
means we’ll be moving between gears quite frequently, but my hope/expectation is that
there will be fairly useful and evident cross-currents between all our veins of conversation.
I had a hard time assigning stories to weeks (Is this story better for “exposition” or
“structure”??) because the truth is, of course, stories are Gestalt wholes composed of (and
growing luminescent by way of) the interaction between their various parts. Hopefully our
discussions can reflect this. Which is to say: on a day devoted to “exposition,” don’t be
afraid to talk about structure. Or character. Or dialogue. Indeed, it would probably be
unnatural if we didn’t.
Published Stories: Each week you’ll be responsible for reading about 50-70 pages of
published fiction, in addition to reading writing assignments (or completed stories) by your
peers. The reading load will be intense but by no means unmanageable, and hopefully
quite enjoyable; if it sounds unpleasant you might not want to enroll in the course! We’ll
be reading a number of stories from two collections: The Beggar Maid, by Alice Munro;
and Jesus’ Son, by Denis Johnson. You can purchase both texts from Broad Street Books.
In addition, there is a course pack available as PDF or printed hard copy. I will
occasionally distribute (either electronically or in-class) supplemental essays on writing
and compassion and living well and also the craft of fiction.
Exercises: Each class, we’ll do a 10-15 minute writing exercise focused on the craft topic
for that day. We’ll discuss the prompt and process of responding to it; students are
encouraged but not required to share what they’ve written. These exercises—in addition to
being (hopefully!) useful in their own right—are meant to provide fodder or inspiration for
the longer stories you write over the course of the semester. I’d like you to buy a notebook
for these exercises. I’ll collect the notebooks at some point in the semester to see what
you’ve been writing—not to evaluate, just to offer some informal thoughts.
Assignments: Over the course of the first month of class, you’ll be responsible for
completing four take-home assignments (essentially, longer exercises). Each one should be
approximately two double-spaced pages. We’ll be workshopping these assignments in
class. Each of you will have two out of four assignments workshopped (half of you will go
one week, the other half the next). In order to do this, you’ll all need to circulate the
assignments before we meet. Here’s how it will work:
1. I will circulate a class email list along with instructions (i.e. who is going when).
2. By noon on the Wednesday before our Friday session, email your assignment to
everyone in the class (and a copy to me).
The system is pretty simple, but it means the Assignments (for those of you who are
getting workshopped in a given week) are essentially due on Wednesday rather than
Friday. Please print the assignments, if you can, and jot down some thoughts about
each one for our informal workshop in class.
Response Papers. Over the course of the semester, you will each be responsible for
writing three critical responses: two about story collections, the third about a reading. The
collections may be chosen from the list I provide, but if you’d like to write about a
collection not included on the list (something you’ve been meaning or wanting to read) just
send me an email; I’ll probably say yes. These critical responses should be a mixture of
analysis and evaluation. Please don’t use the NYTimes as your guide; I think most of their
reviews are terrible. The critical response to a live reading shouldn’t just be a report on
what the author wore or how many times s/he said “um,” but an analysis of how the
writer’s reading style/affect/manner influenced your understanding and reception of his
work; what kinds of pieces the author chose to read (and why you think they might have
been chosen); what kinds of questions were asked and how the author responded. In other
words, a critical response. It’s exciting to watch literature become an event rather than just
a text—make as much as you can of it. Fiction readings are preferable, but consult with me
if there’s a non-fiction or poetry reading you particularly want to write about.
Course Schedule
January 27: Beginnings
Course Guidelines
Opening Pages & Exercise
Assignment #1: 100 Sentences.
February 3: Character
“The Other Place,” Mary Gaitskill
“Love and Honor and Pity and Pride and Compassion and Sacrifice,” Nam Le “Drummond
and Son,” Charles D’Ambrosio
Workshop Assignment #1
In-class Exercise
Assignment #2: World Glossary.
February 10: World
“Work,” “Dundun,” Denis Johnson
“Sea Oak,” George Saunders
Excerpts from The Age of Wire and String, Ben Marcus: “Argument,” “Intercourse with
Resuscitated Wife,” “Air Trance 16,” “The Death of Water,” “SLEEP: Terms,” “Landing
on Floating Island of the Gods,” “Ethics of Listening When Visiting Areas that Contain
Him,” “The Food Costumes of Montana,” “Food Storms of the Original Brother,”
“EATING: Terms.”
Workshop Assignment #2
In-class Exercise
Assignment #3: Five Acts
**Sign up for workshop dates**
February 17: Structure
Keith Lee Morris, “Testimony”*
Alice Munro, “Mischief”
Aria Sloss, “Easter Island.” (Will be emailed in five installments.)*
Workshop Assignment #3
In-class exercise.
Assignment #4: Ways of Seeing
February 24: Point of View
“Royal Beatings,” Alice Munro
“You’re Ugly, Too,” Lorrie Moore
“Emergency,” Denis Johnson
“For Esme—With Love and Squalor,” J.D. Salinger
Workshop Assignment #4
In-class exercise
March 2: Exposition
“Separate Flights,” Andre Dubus
“Providence,” Alice Munro
#20, from Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, by David Foster Wallace
In-class exercise
WORKSHOP STORIES
March 9: Emotion and Sentimentality
“A Tiny Feast,” Chris Adrian
“Lust,” Susan Minot
“Dirty Wedding,” Denis Johnson
In-class exercise
WORKSHOP STORIES
March 30: Conflict
“A Small, Good Thing,” Raymond Carver
“Quality of Life,” Christine Sneed*
“Beggar Maid,” Alice Munro
In-class exercise
WORKSHOP STORIES
April 6: Dialogue
“Wild Swans,” Alice Munro
“Cathedral,” Raymond Carver
“Steady Hands at Seattle General,” “Car Crash While Hitchhiking,” Denis Johnson
In-class Exercise
WORKSHOP STORIES
April 13: Description
“T.A.R.P.,” Emily Ruscovich*
“The Shell Collector,” Anthony Doerr
WORKSHOP STORIES
April 20: Endings
“Simon’s Luck,” Alice Munro
“Widow,” Michelle Latiolais
“Beverly Home” by Denis Johnson
WORKSHOP STORIES
April 27: Free Discussion
“Feathers,” Raymond Carver
“Further Interpretations of Real Life Events,” Kevin Moffett*
“The Screenwriter,” Charlie D’Ambrosio
WORKSHOP STORIES
May 4: Free Discussion
“In the Garden of the North American Martyrs,” Tobias Wolff
“The Professor,” Lydia Davis
WORKSHOP STORIES
*All stories marked with an “*” are written by friends of mine, which doesn’t mean you
have to like them; it does mean you’ll be able to ask the authors questions. Please read
each of these stories the weekend before we’ll be discussing it, and email me a question or
two for the author by that Monday. This will give me time to forward your questions to
the author(ess), who will answer them in time for me to share his/her responses in class
that Friday. I’ll remind you as each story comes up.