Instructor: Homsher | WF 02:00 PM – 03:20 PM
This is a literature course for writers, designed to help students learn to read as writers—to think carefully about craft, or the way a piece of fiction is constructed. This particular forms class is centered around the craft of writing obsession. We will discuss how authors from various cultures, languages, and literary movements have developed techniques (through elements such as point of view, character, setting, structure, pacing, and tone) in order to evoke a sense of obsession, addiction, fixation, or paranoia in their fiction. We will also look at obsession as a potent engine for fiction writing, something that propels characters into unconventional thought patterns and extreme performances, a heightened emotion or attachment that distorts interiority and leaks into language itself.