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Mystery and Manners: The American Short Story

Module description

This module will develop your ability to write short fiction, through practice – in workshop-style seminars – and through critical appreciation, which will include close reading of four masters of the American short story: Eudora Welty, Flannery O’Connor, John Cheever and Raymond Carver. You will gain an informed understanding of the techniques and varieties of short fiction, of narrative, content, style and delivery, and the confidence and skills to draft, polish and edit your own original work.

Aimed at creative writing students who wish to develop and hone their fiction-writing skills, and students who would like to explore this aspect of American literature through creative practice.

Module aims - intentions of the module

• The stories and critical works of four influential American short story writers will be used as models to explore advanced techniques of fiction-writing. Through practical exercises and critical discussion, the module will develop students' awareness and understanding of the short story as a distinct form, and confidence in the processes involved in composing original short fiction, including developing ideas, drafting, revising, editing and publishing.

Intended Learning Outcomes (ILOs)

ILO: Module-specific skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 1. Gain an informed appreciation of the work and writing craft of four influential American short story writers
• 2. Demonstrate an understanding of the technical qualities of short fiction, including narrative structure, voice, setting, character and the role of conflict
• 3. Demonstrate a capacity to write short fiction in a manner informed by an understanding of fiction-writing techniques and approaches
• 4. Develop advanced skills of close reading, and creative, critical analysis of the short story as a distinct form

ILO: Discipline-specific skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 5. Develop confidence in the craft of composition – learning to recognise and practise techniques of characterisation, setting, narrative, suspense - in order to create original works of short fiction
• 6. Construct persuasive written and oral arguments concerning student’s own creative writing and those literary models looked at over the course of the module

ILO: Personal and key skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 7. Demonstrate, through seminar work and presentations, advanced communication skills, an ability to work both individually and in groups
• 8. Demonstrate, through writing critical and self-reflective essays and creative work, an advanced capacity to construct a coherent, substantiated argument, advanced skills of creative expression, appropriate research and bibliographic skills and a capacity to write clear and correct prose
• 9. Demonstrate, through research for seminars and essays, advanced proficiency in information retrieval and analysis
• 10. Demonstrate, through the creative assessment and essay, the ability to write for a range of audiences (including non-academic audiences); and show an awareness of the publishing market for short fiction

Syllabus plan

Whilst the content may vary from year to year, it is envisioned that it will cover some or all of the following topics:

• Introduction: The nature of the beast
• Setting out
• Exposition of Character and Point of View
• Character building
• Narrative potential and mounting of incident
• Objective correlative
• Dialogue
• ‘Voice’
• Making and marking time
• Short cuts: Structure and editing
• Editing

Learning activities and teaching methods (given in hours of study time)

Details of learning activities and teaching methods

Formative assessment

Summative assessment (% of credit)

Details of summative assessment

Details of re-assessment (where required by referral or deferral)

Re-assessment notes

Deferral – if you miss an assessment for certificated reasons judged acceptable by the Mitigation Committee, you will normally be either deferred in the assessment or an extension may be granted. The mark given for a re-assessment taken as a result of deferral will not be capped and will be treated as it would be if it were your first attempt at the assessment.

Referral – if you have failed the module overall (i.e. a final overall module mark of less than 40%) you will be required to submit a further assessment as necessary. If you are successful on referral, your overall module mark will be capped at 40%.

Indicative learning resources - Basic reading

• Raymond Carver, Where I’m Calling From: Selected Stories (Harvill, 1993)
• Raymond Carver, Fires (Vintage, 2009)
• John Cheever, Collected (Vintage 1990)
• Shirley Jackson, Come Along With Me (Penguin, 2013)
• Flannery O’Connor, Complete Stories (Faber, 2009)
• Flannery O’Connor, Mystery and Manners (Faber, 2014)
• Eudora Welty, Collected Stories of Eudora Welty (Harvard UP, 1993)
• Eudora Welty, One Writer’s Beginnings (Faber/Harvard UP, 1993)
• Body, Kasia, ed. The New Penguin Book of American Short Stories (Penguin, 2011)
• Newland, Courttia and Hershman, Tania eds. Writing short Stories: A Writers’ & Artists’ Companion (Bloomsbury, 2015)
  Prose, Francine, How to Read Like A Writer (Harper Perennial)

Indicative learning resources - Web based and electronic resources

ELE – https://vle.exeter.ac.uk/course/view.php?id=4951

Key words search

Creative writing/American literature