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Creative Writing 1
: Introduction to Short Story
 (and Poetry)

Creative Writing 1 is an introduction to written storytelling and the short story. It is designed to help people get started as writers, improve as writers, and – most importantly – start reading as writers. Even if you are primarily interested in nonfiction storytelling (memoir and personal essay), this is still the course to start with.

The CW1 course at Some Blind Alleys is not a typical “Beginners’ Creative Writing” course. As with all Some Blind Alleys Workshops, it is not about a person’s “creativity,” and it is not blandly or rigidly about technique, and it is not a How-To-Write course. It is a literature course for writers, or people who would like to try writing.

CW1 is demanding, time-consuming, and fast-paced, and it’s also – and most importantly – a lot of fun. It’s designed to suit the serious and the not-so-serious. The focus is on basics, common flaws, and learning to read short stories as writers. The goal is to produce a finished story, but more important is that people gain or improve a vocabulary with which to assess their own writing, and better appreciate masterworks. We also look at typical flaws such as summarizing (rather than dramatizing), overwriting, cliché, backstory, transparency of technique, flat dialogue, punchline endings, and other problems.

Overview

All classes are broken into two halves. In the first half, we discuss two or three pieces of classic and notable contemporary fiction (in the beginning of CW1, a few short essays on craft are handed out). In the second half, we discuss our own writing. Importantly, everything that is turned in by you is taken home and considered thoughtfully and at length by everyone in class, so that responses to your writing are constructive and well thought out. Moreover, everyone can expect a balanced response: we encourage for the same amount of time that we critique. The critique can be direct and sometimes uncomfortably honest, but the encouragement is passionate and also honest.

Structure

Weeks 1 – 4: Everyone will complete three take-home exercises to help them ease into writing, identify obvious mistakes, and get used to speaking critically about other people’s work. Meanwhile, we read a handful of landmark, convention-altering masterpieces and discuss the origins of the modern short story – as well as a handful of very good contemporary stories.

Weeks 5 – 8: The workshop begins. You write a complete short story (between three and ten pages). You hand it in to everyone else. We take it home and make detailed comments, then we come back a week later and discuss it in class. Your story is discussed for twenty minutes. We spend the first ten minutes discussing what we liked, and the second ten minutes constructively criticizing. We continue to read masterworks of short fiction and very good contemporary stories.

Weeks 9 – 10: The poetry phase of the course takes place. Poetry is not given short shrift by Some Blind Alleys because it is considered an irrelevant form. On the contrary, it is the most important form of writing for writers to study. But interest in poetry writing courses is low, so it is snuck in at the end of CW1. In this part of the course, we read and discuss about twenty of the best poems that have ever been written, write two original poems, and take part in the most illuminating and fun poetry exercise that exists on earth – which Some Blind Alleys has gratefully borrowed from the American poet and scholar W.D. Snodgrass.

Who should take this course?

The foundation courses at Some Blind Alleys are taught as three parts of a single curriculum. This is the foundation of those foundation courses, so to speak. It is the most important course in that curriculum. It is designed to suit people who have never written a single word of fiction in their lives; it’s designed for people who have taken one or two, or numerous, creative writing courses but can’t seem to get something started or finished or published; it’s also designed to expose extremely talented but young (in writing experience, not age) writers to some truly great writing that they might otherwise never encounter.

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