GRADING POLICY
-ASSESSMENT METHODS:
| Assignment | Guidelines | Weight |
| Participation (oral and written) | Regular and punctual attendance, considerate observations of class readings,
enthusiastic involvement in in-class writing exercises, and, most importantly,
constructive commentary (oral and written) on classmates' work that
demonstrates preparation, thoughtfulness, and respect | 40 |
| Drafts | Timely submission of all written assignments that engage with the writing
prompt dynamically and demonstrate an understanding of the technique and
craft discussed. | 30 |
| Final | A final portfolio of original work demonstrating thoughtfulness, creativity, and
revision based on comments from classmates and the professor. Must include
a 500-word reflection and original draft/s, so make sure to hold on to your early
drafts or set up a folder on your personal computer early in semester | 30 |
-ASSESSMENT CRITERIA:
AWork of this quality directly addresses the question or problem raised and provides a coherent argument displaying an extensive knowledge of relevant information or content. This type of work demonstrates the ability to critically evaluate concepts and theory and has an element of novelty and originality. There is clear evidence of a significant amount of reading beyond that required for the course.
BThis is highly competent level of performance and directly addresses the question or problem raised.There is a demonstration of some ability to critically evaluatetheory and concepts and relate them to practice. Discussions reflect the student’s own arguments and are not simply a repetition of standard lecture andreference material. The work does not suffer from any major errors or omissions and provides evidence of reading beyond the required assignments.
CThis is an acceptable level of performance and provides answers that are clear but limited, reflecting the information offered in the lectures and reference readings.
DThis level of performances demonstrates that the student lacks a coherent grasp of the material.Important information is omitted and irrelevant points included.In effect, the student has barely done enough to persuade the instructor that s/he should not fail.
FThis work fails to show any knowledge or understanding of the issues raised in the question. Most of the material in the answer is irrelevant.
-ATTENDANCE REQUIREMENTS:
ATTENDANCE REQUIREMENTS AND EXAMINATION POLICY
You cannot make-up a major exam (midterm or final) without the permission of the Dean’s Office. The Dean’s Office will grant such permission only when the absence was caused by a serious impediment, such as a documented illness, hospitalization or death in the immediate family (in which you must attend the funeral) or other situations of similar gravity. Absences due to other meaningful conflicts, such as job interviews, family celebrations, travel difficulties, student misunderstandings or personal convenience, will not be excused. Students who will be absent from a major exam must notify the Dean’s Office prior to that exam. Absences from class due to the observance of a religious holiday will normally be excused. Individual students who will have to miss class to observe a religious holiday should notify the instructor by the end of the Add/Drop period to make prior arrangements for making up any work that will be missed. The final exam period runs until ____________
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DETAILED SCHEDULE BY UNIT
with Reading/Writing Assignments January 20-April 30
FICTION UNIT 1
Weeks 1-5
Week 1 Writing as a Process, Genre, Time and Characterization in Fiction
1/20: Intro and syllabus review, the writing habit, defining genre
1/22: Read Lydia Davis, Ten Recommendations for Good Writing Habits and Hannah Gamble, The Average Fourth Grader Is a Better Poet Than You
Bring in an object (a postcard, a necklace, a hockey puck). Whatever object you choose, it should be one about which you have a story to tell (real or fictional). Be prepared to tell the story to class.
Assignment: Life Story. Upload to Moodle by Monday 1/27 at 4:30pm
Write a life story: summarize lyrically the entire life of one character. Make sure that you convey a sense of what makes that person different from others. Difference—whether in fiction or real life—defines characters. The point of fiction is not to be relatable—relatable to whom?—but engaging, engrossing, even, dare I say it, entertaining. 2pp max.
Week 2: More on Time, Pacing, Scene v. Summary, Consciousness Slowed
1/27: Submit life story; read Joy Williams’s The Farm
1/29: Workshop; in class read Dino Buzzati’s The Falling Girl
Assignment: A Moment Magnified. Upload to Moodle by Monday 2/3 at 4:30pm
Develop a passage or moment from your life story, or one newly made up. It can be momentous but need not be obviously so; a good story can hinge on big moments – the day Yun made the winning play – and small – the morning Rodrigo returned his overdue library books. Write this moment out as scene, i.e. show a reader that moment using action, description, dialogue. You might consider using repetitions or near-repetitions of sentences to slow time and concentrate on the interplay between what a character perceives and the actual event. 2pp max.
Week 3: Tone and POV
2/3: Submit a moment magnified assignment; read Aimee Bender The End of the Line and Raymond Carver Why Don’t You Dance?
2/5: Workshop
2/7 (makeup day for April 21): Short shorts in class; be prepared to write
Writing Assignment: Setting the Tone. Upload by Monday 2/10 at 4:30 pm
  
Tone in fiction may be defined as the attitude of the narrator toward their subject/s. It can be serious, empathetic, ironic, disdainful, etc. Another definition of tone, given by Robert Boswell, is the distance between the narrator and the character. Tone and point of view are, therefore, linked; maybe inextricably.
With that in mind, do one of the following:
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Rewrite one of your former exercises from a different POV—not necessarily from the POV of another character. You could, for ex., change first-person POV to distant third person or second-person POV. Think about how this changes your attitude – and a reader’s – toward the material and character. Also, if rewriting, you should do more than just change pronouns!
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Develop a new fictional scene and write it in close third-person POV. Close third person enables a writer to capture a character-adjacent voice while maintaining narrative distance and (some) objectivity.
3 pp. max.
Week 4: Dialogue, Subtext, Conflict
2/10: Read Amy Hempel Today Will Be a Quiet Day and Denis Johnson Steady Hands at Seattle General
2/12: Workshop
Writing assignment: All Talk. Upload by Tuesday 10/1 at 4:30pm
Write a scene in which two characters who know each other well are involved in an activity (cleaning out an attic, preparing a meal, repairing a car, etc.). Write the scene with a lot of dialogue—at least 60%. The characters should be talking about something other than what they are doing. Make sure to:
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Incorporate gesture and silence into the dialogue
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Use dialogue tags only when absolutely necessary (mostly stick to “h/s/t said; no tags with
adverbs like “loudly” or “angrily” UNLESS it serves real purpose!)
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Remember that these characters have a shared history, so a lot is left unsaid, spoken in
“code,” buried.
4 pp. max.
Week 5: Revising, Expanding, Plot
2/17: Submit All Talk; read Edward P. Jones, The First Day and Grace Paley, Wants
2/19: Workshop
**Heads-up: for your final portfolio, you must develop one of your fictions into a complete short story; revision exercises will be given later in semester, but you should be working on this story on your own throughout semester**
POETRY UNIT 2
Weeks 6-10
 
Week 6: Poetry. Register, Diction, Subject
2/24: Defining Poetry. First Words exercise
2/26: Read Altitudes of Register Packet
Writing assignment: High/Low Upload by Monday 3/3 at 4:30pm
Write a poem (min. 12 lines) with an investment in register that either:
Treats a “high” subject, like a Roman God or the Great American Novel, in a low or middle register, i.e., in ordinary speech. Your poem might begin: “What I dig about Moby Dick is the two guys love each other.”
Or elevates a “low” subject to a high style. Take a subject you consider too humble for poetry and treat it with the manner of high poetry. Write, for example, an ode to armpits or a meditation on Fitbit. **exercise taken from Tony Hoagland's Art of Voice**
Week 7: The Poetic Line
3/3: Read the Line Packet
3/5: Workshop
Writing Assignment: Short v. Long. Upload by Monday 3/17 at 4:30pm
Write a poem (min. 14 lines) with an investment in lines and line breaks that either:
Employs short, heavily enjambed lines (4-6 syllables) and has one or two carefully placed end-stopped lines.
Employs long, end-stopped lines (12-14 syllables) and has one or two carefully placed enjambed lines.
Week 8:
No class—spring break March 10-14
Week 9: Thinking in Images
3/17: Submit short v. long poems; read Image Packet
3/19: Workshop
Writing Assignment: Thinking in Images. Upload by Monday 3/24 at 4:30pm
Write a poem of min. 14 lines with an investment in images which either:
Describes a landscape by providing a catalog of images—1 or so per line. The more particular the better. Consider the arrangement, the tensions and ambient mood derived by juxtaposing discrete images. Title your poem after the landscape—Astrodome, Laundromat, Garbatella, but avoid “saying” anything about how you feel about the landscape. Trust your images! Minimum 12 lines
Or 
Takes an abstract subject for a title: an emotion (joy, confusion), a quality (spirituality, division), or a concept (capitalism, race). The body of the poem should illustrate the abstraction through narrative and/or description. The abstraction itself cannot appear by name in the body of the poem. Minimum 12 lines
Week 10: Borrowed subjects, Borrowed forms
3/24: Submit images poem; read Borrowed forms packet 3/26: Workshop
Writing Assignment: Borrowed subjects, Borrowed Forms Upload by Monday 3/31 at 4:30pm
Write a poem of min. 14 lines that
Borrows the subject matter and/or the form of one of the poems in this week’s packet. So, if that poem is a sonnet, write a sonnet. If it’s an ekphrastic poem, write your own ekphrastic poem about a different work of visual art.
CREATIVE NONFICTION UNIT 3
Weeks 11-14
Week 11: Creative Nonfiction: Memoir and Catalogs
3/31: Submit borrowed forms poem; intro to Creative nonfiction 4/2: Workshop
Week 12: Creative Nonfiction: Memoir and Personal Essays
4/7: Read Jamaica Kincaid Putting Myself Together and Zadie Smith Joy
4/9: Read Annie Dillard Total Eclipse
Week 13: Creative Nonfiction: (Self?) Portraits
4/14: Read Leslie Jamison Confessions of an Unredeemed Fan and Joan Didion Georgia O’Keefe
4/16: Read Mary Ruefle My Private Property
Creative Nonfiction Essay. Complete draft by 4/23; submit by Monday 4/28 at 4:30pm
Choose any of the essays we have read and use it as a model to write your own 3-6-pp. creative nonfiction essay. You could, for example, write a memoir as a series of anecdotes revolving around one season or one emotion; write about a single day in your life from shifting perspectives; write an essay about a person (not family) who has been important to you and include, within that portrait of the other, a portrait of yourself.
Week 14: Creative Nonfiction: Revision
4/21: NO CLASS—holiday
4/23: Come to class with working draft of nonfiction essay; small group workshops
Week 15: Revision and Final Thoughts
4/28: No class. One-on-one meetings TBD. Submit creative nonfiction essay.
4/30: Submit commonplace book; come to class with one poem you would like to revise and one fiction exercise for final portfolio
Week 16:Wrapping Up/Final Portfolio
5/5: Final Portfolio should be uploaded by 4:15 p.m. See instructions below.
FINAL PORTFOLIO INSTRUCTIONS
In lieu of a final exam, you will significantly revise and expand one of the short fiction exercises (and turn it into a short story), two poems and your creative nonfiction essay.
This is not a request that you spellcheck and correct mistakes of usage or grammar— that’s proofreading.
Revisions should be based on workshop and instructor comments and may involve cutting, adding, rewording, rephrasing, retitling, moving paragraphs or stanzas around.
Your final portfolio should include a 2-page reflection (approx. 600 words) describing your drafting and revision process. Process is the operative word. What did you discover about the writing process and genre generally this semester? Where did you draw most inspiration from? How did the readings inform your own writing? How did you revise? What criticism did you find most helpful? Least? What did you discover about your own writing in the process of revision?
Combine the following into one document:
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Reflection
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Revised story (minimum 5 pages)
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Original draft of story/fiction exercise
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2 revised poems
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Original drafts of poems
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Revised creative nonfiction essay
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Original essay
All prose (including reflection) should be double-spaced, all poetry single-spaced. Each poem should begin on a fresh page.
A header should ONLY appear in the upper-left corner of the first page of your reflection:
Student Name
Prof. Schutt
CW-205
Date
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