This schedule is subject to change. Please follow Moodle for assignments, readings, and instructions.
Week One:
Course Introduction:
Travel Writing –Course introduction; the travel writer’s toolbox; an introduction to the workshop, to the “micro,” and to the snapshot assignment, due the following week.
Week Two:
Micro-travel, writing in miniature; discussion of the elements of successful writing (structure, voice, and setting); an introduction to the personal travel essay; reader response assignment.
Week Three:
Travel writing with a mission; the hook, the purpose, and the destination of a travel piece; the creation of suspense in travel writing. Reader response assignment.
Week Four:
The units of writing: nouns, verbs, sentences, and paragraphs; the travel essay as a confession; preparation of travel essay 1: the personal essay.
Week Five:
The destination piece; fact gathering, research, interviewing techniques, and finding an angle; reader response assignment.
Week Six:
Midterm conferences
Week Seven
Spring Break
Week Eight
Journalistic techniques as they apply to travel writing: the lead, fact finding, subjects, objects, the journalistic voice vs the the voice of the personal essay.Research, Interviews, and bias. Preparation of Travel Essay 2: The destination essay.
Week Nine
The travelogue and the travel memoir; the importance of observation and details; the division of an essay, and the different types of structures a travel essay can take on. Reading journal assignment.
Week Ten
The challenges of the travel Memoir: Becoming the protagonist in your own work; memory, fictional techniques as applied to non-fiction; place as a subject. The eye vs the “I”. Reading journal assignment.
Week Eleven
POV in memoir; dialogue; the authorial lens; creative freedom vs factually accurate writing; completing writing of travel essay 3: the memoir.
Week Twelve
Humor and self mockery in travel writing; reading journal assignment.
Week Thirteen
The language of journalism vs the language of creative non-fiction. Travel blogs, blog posts, content creation, and the commercial vs the literary. A continued discussion of “leads” and their function in commercial travel writing. Reader response assignment.
Week Fourteen
The editing process: cutting, revising, rewriting, and readying work for publication; a discussion of the final chapbook. The selection of an excerpt for the creative writing showcase.
Week 15
Final workshop week; Final Portfolios due on the last day of class. No late portfolios, no exceptions. Also, no final portfolio=failing grade. Creative writing showcase.
|