You are invited to sign up for Dr. Søri Higgins's inaugural independent online class! She's offering this course herself, rather than through any organization or institution. If it's successful, she'll offer more like it--and the topics can be chosen by popular demand. Please think about joining, and she'd be very grateful if you'd help spread the word. If you can email this to your friends, post it on social media, and talk about to those who might be interested, I'd be grateful. <3
The Architecture of a Short Story
Tuesdays at 5:30pm Eastern (online)
4 sessions: Sept 17, Sept 24, Oct 1, Oct 8
Cost: $200
Calling all writers of fiction, authors of any kind, fans of literature, and future scholars of the written arts! This course will be a focused, rigorous examination of the mathematical structures of short stories. We’ll examine a wide variety of short(er) fiction works, analyzing them to reveal the ways they use proportion and balance—or symmetry and imbalance—dissecting them to discover their frameworks. What elements do they have? How are they put together? Are there dimensions that create certain effects in readers? How do they handle tension? What gives them a sense of graceful design? Whatever you may write, whatever you may like to read, you can learn a great deal from studying the masters’ blueprints.
Before each class, students should read the three assigned stories (I'll provide places where you can get them) and fill out a worksheet that I'll provide.
Class 1, Sept 17
§ “Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” by Ambrose Bierce
§ “The Pit and the Pendulum” by Edgar Allan Poe
§ “Bartleby, the Scrivener” by Herman Melville
Class 2, Sept 24
§ “Contents of a Dead Man’s Pockets” by Jack Finney
§ “There Shall Come Soft Rains” by Ray Bradbury
§ “How to Talk to Girls at Parties” by Neil Gaiman
Class 3, Oct 1
§ “Sonny’s Blues” by James Baldwin
§ “What the Body Knows” by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
§ “Whither Thou Goest” by Richard Selzer
Class 4, Oct 8
§ “Parker’s Back” by Flannery O’Connor
§ “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
§ “Et in Sempiternum Pereant” by Charles Williams