Fall 2007 information

Advanced Novel Writing Workshop

NYU X32.9357

Information and materials for students
Instructor: Meredith Sue Willis

Updated 12-13-07

Good Luck with Your Novels! You were a great class!

 

 

Check here for latest updates:

 

 


Doris Lessing Won
the Nobel Prize for Literature!

.
Writers we lost this year. See below.
 

Syllabus
Advanced Novel Writing Workshop

X32.9357, Fall 2007
Instructor: Meredith Sue Willis
Email: MeredithSueWillis@gmail.com

Note Change of class start time:
Wednesdays 6:30 PM - 8:50 PM
Bobst Library, Room 736
September 26, 2007- December 12, 2007
No Class 10-10-07
No Class 11-21-07

Please check this page about once a week for new materials and updates.

 

Updated Schedule of presenters


Marketing Discussion
Novels recommended for reading/study by students.
Notes on Point of View
Proof reader's marks.
Some quotations about writing.
 

 

Schedule of Classes and Optional Homework

The text for this course is the writing students produce and present to one another plus occasional handouts and online readings. Please provide copies for the class (@12 copies) of up to ten pages from the novel you are working on the week before you present.   The optional short assignments are only for the teacher, and they should be about a page long double-spaced (250 words).  These weekly short assignments go only to MSW. They are optional—a way for you to get a little extra feedback from the teacher; however, they do count toward your total of 50 pages during the course of this class. These 50 pages must be hard-copy, double-spaced, with one inch margins all around and a font comparable to Times New Roman 12 point. To say this another way, the largest part of your 50 pages will be the pieces you present to the class, and the rest will be in the short assignments. You may substitute an equal number of words from your novel if you don't want to do the assignment. Please check back to this page regularly for changes, updates, and more information.

 

 

1. 9-26-07 Don't forget to bring your 1 page overview and 1-2 page writing sample with enough copies for everyone in the class-- about 12 copies total.   Structure of the course and structure of the novel. Common vocabulary for talking about novels: show & tell, point of view; process and product, scene and summary; outlining, the market, etc. What can narrative prose do that movies cannot? How do we judge narrative prose?   What kind of feedback do you find most useful?  Essential importance of Point of View in novels. SCHEDULE PRESENTATIONS.
 
2 10-3-07 Assignment due: Write a short scene from your novel with an important conflict in it.   More discussion of point of view, scene, and tense. See http://www.meredithsuewillis.com/materials.html#povsamples , http://meredithsuewillis.com/materials.html#scene , and http://www.meredithsuewillis.com/materials.html#presenttense. Read an article on psychology of point of view at: psychology of point of view and the New York Times list of the best novels in the last 25 years. INDIVIDUAL PRESENTATIONS.

 

No Class October 10

3.10-17-07  Assignment due: Write a group scene from your novel. This might be a party, a church dinner, a class. Use the people as part of the setting: colorful clothes, or a mass of unfamiliar faces, etc. Think about the point of view of this scene: is it being told by someone in the midst of it or from a great distance? Is it first seen in full, as a long shot? Or is it first seen up close, from one character's sense of being lost in the crowd?  Reading: If you haven't read them yet, read the materials online for session 2. above and my notes on minor characters..  Optional: Read an article in the New York Times about the future of book publishing. INDIVIDUAL PRESENTATIONS.
 

4 10-24-07  Assignment due: Write a scene in which you use physical description (including senses other than the visual) to explore a minor character. Reading assignments: Read the material on dialogue at: Dialogue Tags ; Types of Discourse ; notes on various kinds of publishing at  Publishing Types and Print on Demand. Also take a look at the discussion of Memoir and Fiction by Keith Maillard and Carole Rosenthal in Books For Readers Issue #80. If you haven't read the material on scene yet, please read it as well as the samples of physical action in fiction. INDIVIDUAL PRESENTATIONS.
 

5. 10-31-07   Assignment due :  Write a scene in which the minor character just introduced has a monologue--this may be spoken aloud or in the character's head, or expressed in some other way. Since it is unlikely that your novel is actually in this particular character's head, try having the monologue be spoken aloud or expressed in some other way that fits into your novel: a letter? an e-mail message? an acceptance speech at an awards ceremony? If you haven't read it, read the notes on minor characters and this excerpt from Trespassers.    Also see these descriptions of minor characters. Just for fun, take a look at Elmore Leonard's Ten Rules for writers.
In class: Brief Marketing Discussion. Go to the resources page, and in particular to the links in the left hand column for: Agents, Articles of interest to writers, online places to submit fiction, Book Doctors & Private Editors, Book Publishers (small), Copyright , Literary Agents, Markets for Literary Fiction, Printers: Recommended book producers (not publishers), Publicizing Your Book , and more online resources for writers.
INDIVIDUAL PRESENTATIONS.
 

6. 11-7-07 Assignment due:  Write a scene that uses a technique that film also uses (establishing shot, jump cut, etc.).  Also see samples of what I mean by close-up and long-shot in fiction http://www.meredithsuewillis.com/materials.html#closeuplongshot  and a little more on some useful film terms at http://www.meredithsuewillis.com/materials.html#filmterms .   INDIVIDUAL PRESENTATIONS.
 

7.11-14-07 Assignment due: Write a scene that emphasizes a technique that is especially novelistic (memory, word play, flashback, interior monologue, etc.)  Read the information on flashback at http://www.meredithsuewillis.com/materials.html#flashback  

As requested, the sample query letters.

 

No Class 11-21-07


8. 11-28-07 Assignment due: A scene with a lot of dialogue in it. Perhaps a non-point-of-view character's point of view is revealed indirectly.    Discussion of dialogue. . Take a look at  "Too Many Tags."    Optional: " Dialogue: The Spine of Fiction." (article by MSW about dialogue) INDIVIDUAL PRESENTATIONS

 


9. 12-5-07 Assignment due: Write an important scene in your novel in which the weather plays a part. See discussion at weather. In class: A little on revising novels. INDIVIDUAL PRESENTATIONS.

No homework accepted after this date.

10. 12-12-07 THE END IS HERE! HAPPY HOLIDAYS AND FRUITFUL WRITING!
Discussion: "interior weather" in your novel-- dreams. Some tricks of the Narrative Trade. Also, come prepared to say a very few sentences about where your novel is at this point, and where you hope to go next with it
INDIVIDUAL PRESENTATIONS and FAREWELLS
 

 

Optional readings:

Online writing by Meredith Sue Willis:

"Tales of the Abstract Expressionists" at Tatlin's Tower;

"Recessional" at Coelecanth Magazine

More online fiction by MSW

"The Business of Books, by André Schiffrin," reviewed by Meredith Sue Willis (the status of publishing)

"On Cutting," (article by MSW about editing and revising)

" Dialogue: The Spine of Fiction," (article by MSW about dialogue)

Notes on Pros & Cons of Present Tense in Fiction

Short Bibliography of How-to-Write Books

For proofreader's marks, go to Accurate.

For Information on Agents.

Notes on types of publishing

Notes on Print-on-Demand

 

 

 

Killing the Angel in the House

 

It was she who used to come between me and my paper w hen I was writing reviews. It was she who bothered me and wasted my time and so tormented me that at last I killed her. You who come of a younger and happier generation may not have heard of her– you may not know what I mean by the Angel in the House. I will describe her as shortly as I can. She was intensely sympathetic. She was immensely charming. She was utterly unselfish. She excelled in the difficult arts of family life. She sacrificed herself daily. If there was chicken, she took the leg; if there was a draught she sat in it–in short she was so constituted that she never had a mind or wish of her own, but preferred to sympathize always with the minds of wishes of others. Above all– I need not say it– she was pure...And when I came to write I encountered her with the very first words. The shadow of her wings fell o my page; I heard the rustling of her skirts in the room. Directly, that is to say, I took my pen in hand to review that novel by a famous man, she slipped behind me and whispered: "my dear, you are a young woman. You are writing about a book that has been written by a man. Be sympathetic; he tender; flatter; deceive; use all the arts ad wiles of our sex. Never let anybody guess that you have a mind of your own. Above all, be pure." And she made as if to guide my pen. I now record the one act for which I take some credit to myself, though the credit right belongs to some excellent ancestors of mine who left me a certain sum of money–shall we say five hundred pounds a year?– so that it was not necessary for me to depend solely on charm for my living. I turned upon her and caught her by the throat. I did my best to kill her. My excuse, if I were to be had up in a court of law, would be that I acted in self-defence. Had I not killed her she would have killed me. She would have plucked the heart out of my writing.

 

--Virginia Woolf, From "Professions for Women,"

in The Death of the Moth and Other Essays,

(New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1970) 236-239.

 

 

List of Presenters for Fall 2007

 

 

2. 10-3-07               John Birch, Susan Rabin


No Class October 10

 

3. 10-17-07             Richard, Lisa, Vinny, Samantha Kane

 

4 10-24-07              Michael Owen, Vicky Myers, Anne Liedtka, Richard

 

5. 10-31-07             Lisa, Richard, Ida Chung, John

 

6. 11-7-07                Vinny Lopez, Samantha Kane, Ida Chung, PLUS Richard (5 pp)

 

7. 11-14-07              Anne Liedtka, Vicky Myers, Michael Owen, Ida Chung, Susan Rabin (see Susan's website)

No Class 11-21-07
      

8. 11-28-07              Vinny Lopez, VIcky Myers,  Susan Rabin, John Birch, PLUS: Samantha (5pp)

 

9. 12-5-07                Samantha Kane, Ida Chung, Susan Rabin, Anne Liedtka, Michael Owen

 

10. 12-12-0             Ida Chung, Michael Owen, Lisa Winter-Das, John Birch,Vicky Myers (5 pp), Anne Liedtka      

 

 

 

 

Recommended Novels from past Advanced Novel Workshops:

Cat’s Eye
Margaret Atwood
Exiles in America
Christopher Bram
" Great psychological drama– diff points of view"
Jane Eyre           
Charlotte Bronte           
“Just perfect.”
Thank You for Smoking           
Christopher Buckley          
" Satire"
Possession
 A.S. Byatt
Jane Eyre           
Charlotte Bronte           
“Just perfect.”
The Alchemist           
Paulo Coelho           
"Different reinforcing messages over time"
The Eyre Affair           
Jasper Fford          
" This is just for fun if you love Jane Eyre"
Three Junes
Julia Glass
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night
Mark Haddon
" Great consistent voice"
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle           
Murakami Haruki           
" Freedom to be Imaginative."
What I loved 
Siri Hustvedt
"Innovative book of ideas"
The World According to Garp
John Irving
Never Let Me Go
 Kazuo Ishiguro
"Exquisitely sad alternative world story."

Woman Warrior           
Maxine Hong Kingston
100 Years of Solitude
Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Black Swan Green
David Mitchell
The Time Travelers’s Wife
Audrey Niffenegger
" Brilliant handling of flashforward and back"
Vernon God Little
D.B.C. Pierre
Special Topics in Calamity Physics           
Marsha Pelils           
"Clever literary murder mystery"
Nine Stories
J.D. Salinger           
" Simplicity in setting up complex Characters"
Blindness
Jose Saramago
King Kong on East 4th St.
 Jagna Wojcicka Sharff
"Social study Lower East Side in 80's/70's"
The Secret History
Donna Tartt
The Glass Castle
Jeanette Walls
"Powerful memoir."
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 

 

 

Writers pictured are: Grace Paley, Kurt Vonnegut, and Tillie Olsen.

 

 

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