Through dialogue, debate and an intensely practical approach to the writer’s craft, we shall explore the nature and role of fiction. The primary focus will be the students’ own writing, produced between sessions, and examined by the group in the course of those sessions.
We shall begin by addressing in broad terms the nature and role of fiction, before going on to explore memory as one of the fiction-writer’s key resources. How do we know whether our memories are accurate? If we accept that all memories are, in some sense, created fictions, what are the implications for the fiction-writer? This will lead naturally into a discussion of the imagination’s role in translating our necessarily incomplete and often imprecise memories into vivid fictional form; from there we shall move into a wider discussion of the nature of the creative imagination.
We shall then go on to examine the importance of research as a basis for fiction. Some fiction is deeply indebted to the historical record, while other works suggest careful research in a specialist field. Even works of fiction that seem to deal with matters readily available to anyone who lives life with an awareness of his/her surroundings may, at certain points, require research on the part of the author. We shall be examining the pleasures – and pitfalls – of research-based writing, and asking ourselves whether the success of a fictional narrative depends on its fidelity to the research that underpins it. Finally we shall examine the value of close observation of the material world – a form of research – before drawing together the various strands of the course.
Learning outcomes
- An understanding of the art and craft of fiction as practised by published writers;
- An understanding of the practicalities of fiction-writing, including such matters as the interaction of memory and the creative imagination and the uses of research in the writing of fiction;
- A greater confidence in both the practice of fiction-writing and the practice of criticism.
