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About the Fiction Curriculum Every new fiction student at Stonecoast is enrolled in a special workshop on "Structure and Rhythm of Prose,"focusing on the art and craft of sentence structure, syntax, punctuation, and sentence rhythm. This workshop helps ensure that your foundations as a fiction writer are strong enough to support everything you aim to accomplish in your writing at Stonecoast. And every graduating Stonecoast student takes a special class on how to perform your work, taught by Stonecoast alum and faculty member, world-renowned performer Patricia Smith. In between, Stonecoast fiction writers experience an astounding array of classes, conversations, and readings. You will finish your first residency brimming with creative energy and ideas for your writing during the semester. Once the first residency is over, you will begin your first semester of individualized work with a mentor from Stonecoast's fiction faculty. You and your mentor will design a unique program of study, including a reading list of novels, stories and criticism suggested by each of you with your aims for the semester in mind; writing assignments geared precisely to your developing needs; and creative goals that might include such areas as character and point of view; plot; setting; dialogue; lyric vs. narrative structure; and innovative fictional techniques. Approximately each month, you will send your mentor a packet consisting of revisions, new stories or chapters, any writing exercises you and your mentor have agreed on, and "annotations" on the novels, stories, and criticism you have been reading. The Stonecoast curriculum requires students in the first two semesters to read deeply in classic and contemporary fiction, as well as writing and revising their own work. Our patient, supportive, and astute fiction faculty will guide you to explore novels and stories from all eras as well as landmark literary criticism. While annotations often take the form of brief critical papers on a topic relevant to your own work, they may also take the form of "imitations" of the style of particular writers when you think that might be a more useful approach. Throughout the semester, even if it means revising the original study plan or reading list, your mentor will work with you to make sure that all your work remains focused on developing your writing to its fullest potential. As you continue to build your craft, expand your knowledge of literature, and develop your voice, your second residency and semester will be structured like the first. In your third semester, you will round out your understanding of fiction and your own role as a writer by completing a third-semester enhancement project. Stonecoast's six possible academic emphases (craft, theory, publishing, pedagogy, community service, and interdisciplinary collaboration) allow a student to pursue nearly any deeply held intellectual or artistic passion as an enhancement project. Recent enhancement projects in fiction have included a critical study of flash fiction; adaptation of a novel into a screenplay; documentation of an editorial internship at the Texas Review combined with a study of attitudes towards humor in fiction and popular fiction; an analysis of a graphic novel; establishment of an after-school writing program for teens; and a study of sentence rhythms in Toni Morrison. Stonecoast offers a combination of in-depth knowledge and aesthetic breadth that is unique among fiction programs. Special workshop opportunities for fiction writers during the residency, in addition to the ongoing Fiction Workshop, include Master Classes for graduating seniors and half-residency elective workshops in Setting: Openings and Closing: Comedy: Dialogue: Lyric Prose; Researching Historical Fiction; Writing for Publication; Young Adult Fiction; Comedy: an ongoing Novel workshop; and our popular, student-initiated cross-genre workshop on Writing About Race. As a Stonecoast student, you also have the opportunity to gather a group of students and initiate a special elective workshop on any writing topic. Each residency, a remarkable range of presentations by Stonecoast faculty and visiting writers addresses topics in fiction with in-depth discussion or writing exercises. Recent topics have included "Innovative Fictional Structures," "How to Write Dialogue that is, You Know, Realistic, But Not, Like, Boring," "Writing Across Gender," "Writing the Epic Action Scene," "Landscape as Character," "The Erotic Pen," and "What Fiction Writers Can Learn from Screenwriters," along with special student-led forums on topics from creative journaling to how to start a community writing center, and presentations on the work of James Baldwin, Raymond Chandler, Kazuo Ishiguro, Flannery O'Connor, and Atsiri Thammachoat. A lively mix of writers, critics and agents visit each residency to give readings and presentations and meet with students. Recent and scheduled visitors in fiction include Brad Barkley, Peter Behrens, David Chan, Carolyn Chute, Clint McCown, Tayari Jones, Maxine Swann, Michael White, and Monica Wood.
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