Novel I Fall 2011
Beginning Your NovelNYU WRIT1-CE9355
Bldg:194 Mercer Street Room 210
6:30 PM - 8:50 PM
Sept. 26, 2011- Dec. 5, 2011
School of Continuing and Professional Studies-- New York University
Instructor: Meredith Sue Willis -- Email: MeredithSueWillis@gmail.comupdated 12-13-11
Write Well! You Were a Great Class!
Novelists Who Are Gardeners versus Novelists Who Are Architects
George R.R. Martin (Game of Thrones) says that he thinks of himself as a " 'gardener'—he has a rough idea where he's going but improvises along the way. He sometimes fleshes out only as much of his imaginary world as he needs to make a workable setting for the story. Tolkien was what Martin calls an 'architect.' Tolkien created entire languages, mythologies, and histories for Middle-earth long before he wrote the novels set there. Martin told me that many of his fans assume that he is as meticulous a world-builder as Tolkien was. They write to say, 'I'm fascinated by the languages. I would like to do a study of High Valyrian' '—an ancient tongue. 'Could you send me a glossary and a dictionary and the syntax?' I have to write back [says Marting] and say, 'I've invented seven words of High Valyrian.' "
-- Laura Miller
Read more http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/04/11/110411fa_fact_miller#ixzz1eDRurPxy
It's time for your course evaluations: Please click here.
Student Presentation Schedule
Current Week
Check out these resources
National Novel Writing Month
Some Epistolary Novels
Do You Know These Excellent Living Genre Novelists ?
George R.R. Martin (fantasy ) Joe Sacco (graphic novels) Elmore Leonard (variouse ) Walter Mosley (crime ) Emshwiller and LeGuin (sci. fiction)
How About These Nineteenth Century Titans?
Harriet Beecher Stowe Lev Tolstoy Charles Dickens Thomas Hardy George Eliot
Welcome to Novel I
This page will have the latest, updated version of the syllabus plus other information, materials, and links for students in Novel One, Fall 2011, at NYU with Meredith Sue Willis. To read some recent short fiction online by Meredith Sue Willis, try "Rescue" or "Tara White." For more online writing, click here. For information about her novels, go to commentary.
Schedule of Topics and Assignments
Please communicate with the teacher by email at meredithsuewillis@gmail.com. Changes, updates, and links to readings will be found here on this website at http://www.meredithsuewillis.com/nyunovelone.html. Please check this website at least weekly.
The text for this course will be the assignments and presentation pieces of the other students plus occasional online readings and hand-outs. You are expected to attend all classes, as the course is planned around your critiques and discussion. Please let the instructor know if you must be absent.
Plese turn in all assignments in hard copy, double-spaced with one inch margins on all sides and a font comparable to Times New Roman 12 point. Homework assignments should be about 2 pages (up to 600 words).
Most sessions will include in-class writing. Students who attend and complete all of the assignments should finish the course with an outline and twenty five or more pages of a novel.
See NYU's SCPS Certificate in Creative Writing for information. Click here for specific information on the grading for this class.
1. 9-26 -11 Introduction. In class topics: Process and product; story, plot, and architectonics. What fiction does that movies can't. Fiction as the art of doing many things at once. Centrality of the concrete in fiction. Be prepared to talk briefly about one favorite novel of yours-- what you admire, enjoy, about it.
2. . 10-3 Assignments due: Write: The first time a character visits a place in your novel– describe the place using all five senses if possible. In class topic: More description using concrete language based in the senses.
Read: Selections of place descriptions here.
In class topics: Importance of concrete sense description.
NO CLASS October 10 Columbus Day
3. 10-17 Assignments due:
Write: The first appearance in your novel of a character who is not the main character. Emphasize physical description using concrete details based in the senses, as you did with the place. Also feel free to include dialogue, action–whatever you'd like.
Read: These character descriptions , including Anthony Trollope's wonderfully sleazy Mr. Slope from Barchester Towers and other characters--all described from the outside, focusing on sense details. Also read the characteristics list .
In class topic: Physical Action as part of Description. Centrality of Dialogue to Novels
(Image is of Alan Rickman in role of Mr. Slope.)
4. 10-24 Assignment due:
Write-- homework due: Another appearance of the same character as in the previous assignment but from the middle of your novel. Have this scene reveal more about the character through dialogue and action.
Read: Examples of scene versus summary (showing versus telling) ; the material on dialogue tags, logistics; material on scene; a sample demonstrating how to punctuate thoughts in third person writing.
If you haven't yet, take a look at proof reader's marks , and at the standard formatting for fiction.
Optional: Read the instructor's article on dialogue "Dialogue: The Spine of Fiction".
In class topic: Point-of-view.
During the rest of the course, class members will present passages from their novels for critique. Please bring enough copies of up to ten pages for each member of the class and the teacher one week before your presentation. Sign notes you write to the other students. Consider using proofreaders' marks.
No Class 10-31--
5. 11-7 Assignments due:
Write-- homework due: a passage with dialogue and conflict. Conflict can, of course, be overt, subtle, interior, etc.
Read:: Review of "The Business of Books, by André Schiffrin" by the instructor.
Optional-- read a short story , "The Two Lindas," by MSW that, after the set up, is almost all dialogue--and conflict!
In class topic: The Writng Life and Publishing.For information, 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. Sample query letters online at http://www.meredithsuewillis.com/samplequeryletters.html .
Presentations by class members. (See schedule below)
6. 11-14 Assignments due:
Write-- homework due: a passage inside a character's head while the action is underway. This can be internal monologue, stream of consciousness, internal third person (also called "the reflector"), or other. The character may also be simply thinking, or the thoughts may be happening while the character is in motion.
Read: http://www.meredithsuewillis.com/materials.html#dwight for an example of a character thinking. Also look at free indirect speech, and long-shot & close-up, logistics and an interesting example of flashback.
In class topic: Making space for your writing
Presentations by class members.
7. 11-21 Assignments due: Write-- homework due: A complete scene from your novel. (Optional) Read: Chapter Two from The Mount by Carol Emshwiller. If you haven't read it yet, read this material on scene.
In class topics:
-- Outlining.
Presentations by class members.
8. 11-28 Assignment due:
Write-- homework due: An outline of your novel. The outline might be chapter titles, scene treatment, flow chart, webbing, etc.
Read: Grammar for Fiction Writers. Also look at the summary of an article on using present tense in fiction.
In class topic: Using time-- flashback, jump-cut, stretch, etc.
Presentations by class members.
9. 12-5 Important note: Today is the last date to turn in homework.
Write-- homework due: A revision of any scene or passage in response to suggestions. Please turn in the original version with notes for comparison.
Optional: Here's an interesting article about fiction writing by Walter Mosley and some quotations by famous writers about writing. Two more good articles: MFA Programs versus the NYC Publishing World from Slate and a New York Times article about a Pulitzer Prize winning novel from a small press that they (the Times) failed to review): Tinkers.
In class topic:
-- Logistics: see physical action.
Presentations by class members.
10. 12-12
Final Session-- Farewells!
Presentations by class members.
Hero's Journey Story Structure
Resources for Writers
To Earn a Certificate Using this Course
Recommended Novels and Novelists
Literary Agent Blogs Featured Book Deal
Things to Think About More Resources, Articles, & More
All assignments should be PART OF YOUR NOVEL. If you already have a substantial number of pages drafted, you may substitute any short section for regular assignments.
This course may be used toward the departmental certificate in Creative Writing. In order to earn the credit, your work must be evaluated by the professor. To receive credit for the course, you must turn in at least six of the eight writing assignments. You may choose a pass/fail option, or you may take the course for no grade (NE).
You may also request a letter grade. No grade will be given below a B. To earn a B, you must complete at least six of the eight writing assignments to the professor's satisfaction plus present work for critiquing by the class at least once. To earn an A, you must complete all homework assignments, present work for critiquing by the class at least once, and show evidence of having done the outside reading.
Presenters
November 7 (Bring copies to distribute on 10-24)
Edward Cambro
Dolores McCullough
November 14 (Bring copies to distribute on 11-7)
Alison Hubbard
Dolores McCullough
November 21 (Bring copies to distribute on 11-14)
Edward Cambro
Frank Manfredonio
November28 (Bring copies to distribute on 11-21)
Darcee Bolf
Johanna Stromquist
Sean McManus
December 5 (Bring copies to distribute on 11-28)
Gun Garel
Alison Hubbard
Frank Manfredonio
Darcee Bolf
December 12 (Bring copies to distribute on December 5)
Sean McManus
Brandon Choi
Johanna Stromquist
Bianca Elder
Dolores McCullough
Some Things to Think About
Lewis Hyde writes about art and the market economy: ".....there are categories of human enterprise that are not well organized or supported by market forces. Family life, religious life, public service, pure science, and of course much artistic practice: none of these operates very well when framed simply in terms of exchange value. The second assumption follows: any community that values these things will find nonmarket ways to organize them. It will develop gift-exchange institutions dedicated to their support.
– Lewis Hyde, “On Being Good Ancestors,” The Gift (New York: Vintage, 1979-2007) pp 379-379.
Grace Paley once said in an interview, "I'm an ear believer--I think the ear is smarter than the eye. The experience of reading your work aloud in a class carries you back to that original impulse, 'I want to tell you something.' 'What did you want to tell me? Tell me.' When you tell a story, it's your voice telling a story. You really can hear what's wrong with it. People think you can just sort of smear over it, but that's not true. What I'm trying to do is to remind students they have two ears. One is the ear that listens to their own ordinary life, their family and the street they live on, and the other is the tradition of English literature."
Michael Chabon believes that three things are required for success as a novelist: talent, luck, and discipline. He says, “Discipline is the one element of those three things that you can control, and so that is the one that you have to focus on controlling, and you just have to hope and trust in the other two.”
For me there is no such thing as fiction without poetry and politics. If you excise either one, you have taken the heart of us all. You won't get rich following my advice, but you may come up with something close to true..
Titles are important; I have them before I have books that belong to them. I have last chapters in my mind before I see first chapters, too. I usually begin with endings, with a sense of aftermath, of dust settling, of epilogue. I love plot, and how can you plot a novel if you don't know the ending first? How do you know how to introduce a character if you don't know how he ends up? You might say I back into a novel. All the important discoveries—at the end of a book—those are the things I have to know before I know where to begin.
-- John Irving
More resources:
Resources for writers: Resources.
Books about writing: Bibliography.
Some quotations about writing.
Typical novel lengths: click here.
Article about fiction writing by Walter Mosley.
A few novels recommended for reading/study by students
Notes on Point of View
Proof reader's marks
Marketing notesA Selection of Articles and other materials:
Article on MFA world versus NYC publishing world.
Blog entry by Tayari Jones on the importance of Names.
MSW's article "Apply Film Techniques to Fiction Writing" is in the April 2010 print issue of The Writer magazine. A sample from the article is free online here. You may have to register for the site, but there is no charge.
"The Business of Books, by André Schiffrin" (review by Meredith Sue Willis of a book on the status of publishing)
A literary agent's advice: Should You Hire a Book Doctor?
From The Guardian online: Elmore Leonard’s funny rules of writing, plus those of Margaret Atwood and others:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/feb/20/ten-rules-for-writing-fiction-part-oneSome model novels (and a few memoirs) recommended by members of Advanced Novel Workshop
Some Literary Agents' Blogs (thanks to Jessica Word)
"Pub Rants" (http://pubrants.blogspot.com/)
Nathan Bransford (http://blog.nathanbransford.com/)
Janet Reid (http://jetreidliterary.blogspot.com/)
Jessica Faust (http://bookendslitagency.blogspot.com/)
Some Recommended Novels and Novelists from my Classes
Jane Austen Pride and Prejudice
Muriel Bertenz The Elegance of the Hedgehod
Charles Bukowski Pulp
Orson Scott Card Worthing Saga
Paolo Coehlo Eleven Minutes
The Witch from Portobello
Daniel Defoe Robinson Crusoe
Junot Diaz The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
Ken Follett The Pillars of the Earth
World Without End
Ernest Hemingway The Sun Also Rises
Khalid Hoseini The Kite Runner
Siri Hustvedt What I Loved
Doris Lessing The Golden Notebook
C.S. Lewis Voyage of the Dawn Treader
Haruki Murakama The Wind Up Bird Chronicle
James Patterson Along Came a Spider
Thomas Pynchon Inherent Vice
Tom Robbins Still Life With Woodpecker
Philip Roth Portnoy's Complaint
Sapphire Push
Budd Schulberg Swan Watch
Seth Graham-Smith Pride and Prejudice Zombies
Elizabeth Strout Olive Kitteridge
Abigail Thomas Safekeeping
Tolstoy War and Peace
Anna Karenina
Edith Wharton The House of Mirth
Meredith Sue Willis Oradell at Sea
Tom Wolfe I Am Charlotte Simmons
Man in Full
Carlos Ruiz Zafron Shadow of the Wind
Richard Yates Revolutionary Road
Zafron The Angels Game
Shadow of the Wind
Recommended authors included: Orson Scott Card; Barbara Kingsolver; Hemingway; Richard Morgan; Alice Munro; Robert Gay
Also, take a look at National Novel Writing Month!
Featured Book
Special Price on Meredith Sue Willis's new book of stories from myths and other stories: Re-Visions. Regular Price $14.95 plus S&H now $13.00 plus S&H.
Click on the Book or here.
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