Caitlin
November 26th, 2006, 09:52 AM
So eight weeks flew by, and the course is over, and...I'm feeling melancholy.
It was fantastic. I ended up being "buliding blocks"-ish about it: dealing with character sketches and dialogue and setting in discrete bits, having the students work on one element at a time (though of course there was overlap), thereby crafting a story from scratch. Initially I worried that this would be way too restrictive and artificial a construct - but it worked. It was illuminating and extremely gratifying, following these stories from inception to completion; hearing individual sections from week to week, and then discovering how they fit together. The characters and worlds (all diverse, though all within the sf, rather than fantasty, realm) became so familiar to all of us.
There was beer, after the last class. So all in all, it was a pretty ideal experience.
I just found out I'll be teaching another course (on fantasy writing, only) for the university in the summer. Problem is, it'll only be a week long - so no devising-and-writing-stories framework possible. Ah, well. I have many months to determine a new approach! (All you forum-goers who are reasonably close to Toronto: come on up. Really. It'll only be a week, and there'll be panels by fantasy luminaries, and heck, there'll be ME - and beer...) ;)
I'll post the dates, once I know them.
It was fantastic. I ended up being "buliding blocks"-ish about it: dealing with character sketches and dialogue and setting in discrete bits, having the students work on one element at a time (though of course there was overlap), thereby crafting a story from scratch. Initially I worried that this would be way too restrictive and artificial a construct - but it worked. It was illuminating and extremely gratifying, following these stories from inception to completion; hearing individual sections from week to week, and then discovering how they fit together. The characters and worlds (all diverse, though all within the sf, rather than fantasty, realm) became so familiar to all of us.
There was beer, after the last class. So all in all, it was a pretty ideal experience.
I just found out I'll be teaching another course (on fantasy writing, only) for the university in the summer. Problem is, it'll only be a week long - so no devising-and-writing-stories framework possible. Ah, well. I have many months to determine a new approach! (All you forum-goers who are reasonably close to Toronto: come on up. Really. It'll only be a week, and there'll be panels by fantasy luminaries, and heck, there'll be ME - and beer...) ;)
I'll post the dates, once I know them.