5 consecutive Tuesdays starting August 17 * online at 630pm Eastern * REGISTER

This is a course on stylistic technique for creative writers. Unique to this course, we will use insights from modern linguistics to form the “building-blocks” for our kick-ass sentences.

Rather than seeing style as some function of inspiration or authorial personality, this course sees style as a consequence of knowable and usable mechanics of language.

The goal of this course is to empower students to write whatever-the-hell-style they want. We have two main goals:

1. Rather than what some “correct” stylistic practice looks like, students learn how language creates stylistic effects.
2. Students learn useful properties of language, examine their exploitation by other authors, and practice using them through short-form writing exercises.

The best account of these “useful properties” is found in the field of “stylistics,” which is a rather interdisciplinary (and new) sub-field of linguistics. While we will eschew new terminology and auxiliary concepts where possible, expect rapid exposure to new and sometimes complex ideas. Lectures will tend to have an abstract and philosophical character.

The focus of this course is on style. We will spend a lot of time looking at individual sentences or paragraphs. As such course is less interested in the “larger” concerns of, i.e., plotting. Expect to learn more about character “voice” than character design.

We will study some extreme deviations: Beckett, Burroughs, Pynchon, as well as mainstream examples across various genres.

Planned Course Topics:
- Why metaphors are everywhere
- The sound of a sentence
- Parallelism and deviation (inside and out)
- Conflict? Tension? Reader Attention!

Each weekly course session will last between ninety minutes and two hours. Students should expect to complete some short assignments on their own time between class sessions. Course sessions will meet weekly on either Zoom or Discord video chat; both of these services are free to use.

Please email me if you have any questions about the course: pancieramike@gmail.com

About the facilitator:
Mike Panciera is a writer and computer scientist living in Virginia. His fiction has received recognition from the New River Valley Voices, Glenwood Park, and national Glimmer Train competitions. He leads community courses in computer programming and creative writing.