Comments on: Teaching a Creative Writing Class

By: Teaching Short Story Writing

Teaching Short Story Writing — Thu, 27 May 2010 06:19:34 +0000

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By: Kathy

Kathy — Sat, 22 May 2010 05:55:47 +0000

If I signed up for a creative writing course which I am considering in the near future, I would want to focus on writing not reading, classics or otherwise. I’d structure the course around writing outputs by students and let them select the genre, etc. This should spark creatively and thinking on teh students part. It is not a literature course, I would feel cheated if I took a course on writing and all I did was read other’s writing instead of doing my own.

By: Felicia

Felicia — Wed, 19 May 2010 16:48:29 +0000

As an avid reader who was left cold by some of the classics I was told to read in school, I would have the students explore more than one genre. If you spend a week looking at a certain theme, I would give them 5 different stories to choose from that all have that theme, but present them in different ways and settings. Just a suggestion, since people are so very diverse. I find that art suffers a great deal from narrowly defining what is ‘art’ to a single style or genre. Pop art might not be ‘classic’ but it is art. It takes talent, hard work and skill to create and someone out there thinks it is moving and lovely. A Sci-Fi story can just a well explore the question of what is is to be human as Moby Dick. But if someone just can’t appreciate Moby, they won’t get the underlying question the author is asking. But if they like Sci-Fi, they might see that question more readily in I-Robot. Just a thought.

By: Susie

Susie — Mon, 17 May 2010 16:50:57 +0000

As a teacher myself (and granted, I teach the little guys), I know how easy it is to get overwhelmed, especially if you are given a literal whole world of resources to choose from! Decide what your Big Ideas are first, what you want the students to know, and choose your literature around those goals. Then you can bring in a selection of different pieces to illustrate each Big Idea, and you’re not tied into a particular author, time period, or genre. I’m excited for you–best of luck!