CRW 3110 - FALL 2026 - BROWER

This course is an analysis of and exercises in the elements of fiction: point of view, conflict, characterization, tone, and image. It will focus on character creation, emphasizing how to craft original, fully realized characters with depth and complexity. We will explore setting and world as extensions of character, and examine how a character’s desires, flaws, and choices should actively shape and drive the events of a story’s plot. Our reading will include wide-ranging and diverse writers of realist and speculative fiction, as well as craft texts that illuminate the units and craft techniques under discussion. We will write and workshop two longer pieces of fiction, one of which will be revised at the end of the semester, as well as engage in regular generative exercises building up to these longer pieces.