We shall be looking at a number of matters relevant to the reading and writing of fiction, focusing on several important elements: the places in which our stories are set, the characters inhabiting our fictional spaces, and the ways in which those characters define themselves through their words and through their actions. It’s important to bear in mind that neither in the process of writing nor in the act of reading do we normally separate out these elements, but it can be very useful to subject them to detailed individual examination, as we shall be doing in this course.
We shall begin by analysing excerpts from published fiction in which location and character play a particularly important part. The location of a narrative may be foregrounded or it may be less obviously present, but there are few, if any, fictional narratives in which location is unimportant. Working partly through memory and partly through the exercise of the imagination, we shall think about our own attitudes to place and about ways of rendering our fictional locations.
We shall then move on to consider the ways in which character is represented in fiction. Simple description of character, though occasionally necessary, can sometimes seem unsophisticated by comparison with more oblique methods of representation. How do our characters speak and act? Do they speak and act in precisely the same way in all situations, or do they behave differently in different contexts or in the presence of different interlocutors? We shall have something to say here about first-person narratives, as well as about the dialogue that serves both to define character and impart energy to a narrative.
For most of the course the primary focus will be the students’ own writing, produced between sessions, and discussed by the group during those sessions.
Learning outcomes
- An understanding of the art and craft of fiction as practised by published writers;
- A personal understanding of the practicalities of fiction-writing, including such matters as characterisation, location, narrative voice and narrative viewpoint;
- A greater confidence in both the practice of fiction-writing and the practice of criticism.
