CRW 3110 – Spring 2027 – Hunke

This course treats science fiction and fantasy as what they are: fiction. Good speculative writing demands the same craft any serious fiction demands--point of view, tension, characterization, image, scene, voice--plus a particular discipline: building imagined worlds that are fully realized yet inseparable from the stories their characters live through. A speculative premise that overshadows its characters is a gimmick. A character-driven story that could exist without its speculative world hasn't earned that world. The best speculative fiction makes both impossible to separate, and learning how writers achieve that integration is the central work of this course.
Students will read published science fiction and fantasy as writers, studying how stories work, the craft decisions that make them succeed or fail. They will choose science fiction or fantasy as their focus, write original speculative fiction, and develop an inventory of techniques they can employ deliberately. Through structured workshop, they will learn to give feedback that engages the specific craft of a piece: its structure, its tensions, how its speculative elements function within the story. Revision is central; students will re-envision their work, not merely correct it. The course also introduces the publishing landscape for speculative short fiction, including how submissions work and what a writer's next steps might look like.
All experience levels are welcome. The only prerequisites are a willingness to try and an openness to growth. You will leave with revised work, a working craft vocabulary, and the awareness to keep developing long after the semester ends.