This week, I’m creating a syllabus for my multi-genre creative writing course.
I believe new writers should delay the genre decision for as long as possible. I believe in trying out genres as one does running shoes, asking how will this move me? My introductory mixed-genre course centers on interrogating genre, inventing genre. I believe a kind of wildness and abandon and deliberate rejection of constraint serve new writers well.
What’s most important at the beginning—of a writing life, a semester, a program of studying writing—is to play. And this play must be in the service of one thing: mastering one’s ability to get to one’s own truth. Learning the in-depth intricacies of point of view in fiction, or seven ways to present character, isn’t as important, in my opinion, as learning how to come up with some subjects that engage the writer as much as the reader, and how to approach those subjects in ways that allow for discovery and surprise, depth and meaning.
So, the first part of my course is focused on a survey of genres. Then, sampling-menu-style, students imitate a wide range of one-page forms: prose poems, dictionary definitions, braided mini-essays, a sonnet. I ask students to invent a genre. Then, in the latter half of the course, we try short-shorts, micro-essays, one act plays, and long (three page) poems, alongside triolets and villanelles.
Really, I would rather call my course No Genre or Anti-Genre or Genre Later, After You Learn to Write. Rather than learning literary genre conventions, I hope our focus can be more on how to generate new work that has depth and quality, requires the skills of courage and deep listening, work that values meaning and truth.
Rather than spending time on the conventions (terrain we cover in the literature classroom) of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, I instead focus my multi-genre course on the qualities that any good piece of creative writing needs to have, regardless of genre. We might disagree on what these qualities are; I’ve settled on the following:
- Interesting. And the longer the piece is, the more interesting it needs to be.
- Meaningful. Something has to matter—to the writer, and to us, the readers.
- Well-shaped. When we reread the piece, we notice the care the author took with assembly, with creating a container to hold the interesting meaningful stuff.
One of the things students say that delights me to no end is this: “this course is helping me see things in my literature classes.”
The multi-genre course is a writing techniques class. But it’s also a course in how to read, and what to read. I think that’s why it works so well as a prerequisite to other creative writing classes. It’s secretly a course in close reading for writers. (Which would make it a gorgeous choice for Gen Ed.)
It comes back to play. We know students flock to the science curriculum when they can learn chemistry by baking bread. If we encourage doing (writing) in our English requirements, we can teach fine reading.