the power to choose_multigenre creative writing

The Power to Choose: The Case for theConcept-based Multigenre CreativeWriting Course

Stephanie VandersliceDepartment of Writing and Speech, University of Central Arkansas,USA

A significant outcome of the rise of Creative Writing as a subject in higher educationhas been the subsequent rise of the multi-genre Creative Writing course or module.A foundational course which usually attempts to introduce students to three andsometimes four of the primary genres of Creative Writing (poetry, fiction, creativenonfiction and drama), the multigenre course is widespread across the higher edu-cation spectrum, as an individual unit in the liberal arts or two year college thatmay offer few Creative Writing courses, as the premajor tryout (Burroway, 2003:xv) for writing tracks within the English major or for writing majors themselves.As in many fields, the foundational course differs significantly from later, moreadvanced courses. This essay will examine the challenges of teaching the multigenrecourse, exploring the methods that have been and continue to be used in its teach-ingthe workshop method, the Grand Tour method, and a newer mode gainingacceptance, the concept-based method, which teaches writing concepts that can beapplied across genres. Specifically, I will argue that the concept-based method canbest address the challenges of the multigenre Creative Writing course and the needsof introductory Creative Writing students.

Keywords: multigenre, introductory, foundation course

With the rising popularity of college Creative Writing courses over the pastdecade, the introductory, multigenre course, has become widespread in highereducation. Conversely, however, interest in Creative Writing pedagogy has atbest moved in fits and starts in academe, with the publication of just over ahandful of books on the subject and no journal to cohere the field until now.Not surprisingly, the multigenre course has suffered from this heretoforeneglect.

A broad-spectrum, foundational class, the multigenre course introduces stu-dents to three and sometimes four of the primary Creative Writing genres(usually fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction and drama) in a matter of months.In the absence of any guidelines or overarching theories, instructors of thesecourses are left on their own to invent them, or in many cases, to apply a one-size-fits-all pedagogy that is often merely a variation on the way they havebeen taught. As a result, for years two methods have dominated the teachingof the multigenre course: the workshop model and what I have dubbed theGrand Tour model. Recently, however, a new model has emerged that iswell positioned to better meet the diverse needs and abilities of introductoryCreative Writing students: the concept-based multigenre course.

1479-0726/04/00 0015-07 $20.00/0 2004 S. VandersliceINT. J. FOR THE PRACTICE AND THEORY OF CREATIVE WRITING Vol. 1, No. 0, 2004

15

16 International Journal for the Practice and Theory of Creative Writing

The Workshop Method and the Grand Tour

The workshop method, through which students learn from critically dis-cussing one anothers texts and those of model writers, as well as throughone-on-one tutorials and response from their instructor, essentially reproducesthe advanced or graduate Creative Writing workshop in the introductorycourse. This method can be highly hit or miss for developing students as itis inherently dependent on the ability of novice writers to quickly learn theelements of critique and on the instructor to model them. David Fenza, direc-tor of the Associated Writing Programs, highlights the prevalence of this prob-lem when he writes alas . . . a few too many teaching assistants . . . try toconduct undergraduate intro to Creative Writing classes like graduate work-shops (2003: personal communication). Student learning often takes place ina vacuum, moreover, since the multigenre course is often the first course abeginning writer experiences in Creative Writing. Such courses are rarelyoffered except at larger American secondary schools and in Great Britain, asMichelene Wandor points out, There are no GCSEs or A levels in CreativeWriting (2003: 13).

The other prominent method instructors have invoked over the years hasbeen the Grand Tour. In an effort to effectively cover fiction, poetry, dramaand creative nonfiction over a limited time span, instructors often break thecourse into discrete units on each genre. In the American semester system,this translates to roughly one genre per month during which students are ledon whirlwind excursions exploring the forms of poetry, for example, and arethen asked to produce their own work in the genre for critique. Because theGrand Tour method does manage to give students a taste of each genre,and because it tends to reach the most common denominator across studentpopulations, it appears to be a popular mode of teaching the multigenrecourse, as evidenced, at least in the US, by the sheer number of texts thatsupport it Jason and Lefcowitzs The Creative Writing Handbook, Minots ThreeGenres, Estes and McCanns In a Field of Writing, and Diamond and ShaefersThe Creative Writing Guide to name a representative few. This method has itsshortcomings as well, however, shortcomings which I have experienceddirectly, as I led my students on the Grand Tour for the first half decadethat I taught Creative Writing. Chief among these limitations is the verybreadth and scope of the course certainly we covered all four genres, butjust as catching a glimpse of the Arc DTriomphe from a tour bus might leavesome travellers feeling a bit hollow, our excursions lacked any real depth andultimately, failed to give students a true sense of what it means to be a writerrather than a dilettante.

In addition, the Grand Tour method can also be rather prescriptive, forcingstudents to write in a particular genre when their muse may be beckoningthem to another, and limiting their creativity, the disadvantages of which Iwill further explain later in this essay. Finally, although the structure mightsuggest otherwise, the Grand Tour does not tend to encourage student explo-ration or risk-taking in their early forays into Creative Writing. Rather thangive poetry a try, for example, students who are confirmed fiction writers orfeel truly intimidated by poetry, often turn off during that month of the

17The Case for the Concept-based Multigenre Course

course, half-heartedly completing exercises and readings; treading water whilewaiting to get to their favourite genre and fulfilling their own self-proclaimedprophecies, that they are simply not poets. Often, they then go on to chooseadvanced courses only in their comfort zone and are likely to leave othergenres behind completely.

Dismayed by these results, by the nagging sense that I could be servingmy students better, giving them a more solid understanding of the field ofliterary/imaginative writing, I thought hard about what I really wanted mystudents to learn and whether the course was organised to help them meetthese objectives. In doing so, I remembered again and again the times I hadtold my students if you take one thing about writing away from this class,it should be . . . and realised that there were several one things about writingI wanted them to take away, several concepts that could be applied acrossthe genres and could help them build a solid, sustainable foundation for futuresuccessful writing experiences. I made a list of these concepts and shared itwith fellow creative writers and Creative Writing teachers, adding and sub-tracting to it until I felt I had a working draft of concepts elemental to thecraft of Creative Writing, a draft that would provide the blueprints for a newconcept-based multigenre Creative Writing course.

The Concept-based CourseStudents in my multigenre introductory Creative Writing course study nine

basic concepts of the craft over a 14-week semester (see Appendix A for asample syllabus): The Writers Life; Lyricism and Language; Description andDetail; Awakening the Senses; Dialogue; Characterisation; Stepping Outsidethe Self: Writing About What you Dont Know; Beginnings, Endings, andTitles; Silence and Subtlety and Revision. Students learn these conceptsthrough a combination of lecture, discussion, experimentation and in-classwriting exercises, as well as through examples from published work , but mostimportantly, they study the basics of the craft in their preferred genre, acentral element of the ideal introductory writing course as posited by Bishop(1998: 4), Robert DeMaria (2002) and others. This does not mean that studentswrite in their preferred genre and only in their preferred genre for the durationof the course. On the contrary, students are expected to turn in two extendedwriting assignments for feedback as well as one assignment for full class work-shop and commentary, in addition to several other reflective assignments anda final portfolio. Each of these extended assignments must be in a differentgenre of the students choice. This allows students freedom in both their dailyin-class writing and more extended work, acknowledging that writers at everylevel, from beginning to advanced, do best when they are able to choose theform appropriate for the material (DeMaria, 2002: 8).

In fact, research shows that freedom in imaginative endeavours can expo-nentially increase creativity and enhance imaginative writing. In CreativityResearch and Classroom Practice, for example, Linda Sarbo and Joseph Mox-ley (1994) cite studies that show teacher-assigned topics, forms and genresare less likely to offer opportunities for student engagement than student-sponsored-writing and on that basis, question whether instructor-imposedgenres serve our convenience rather than our students creative process (1994:


135). Specifically, they cite Teresa Amabiles work on creativity and problemsolving tasks which demonstrated that choice in whether or how to engagein a particular problem increases creativity (Sarbo & Moxley, 1994: 140). Sarboand Moxley acknowledge that students require experience with a variety offorms and genres but also call for Creative Writing courses that maximisestudent control over the shape of their written work, ultimately declaringthat We cannot . . . expect students to take seriously our admonition to dis-cover the form inherent in their poems when our syllabus reflects the attitudethat If today is Tuesday, it must be sonnets (1994: 135).

Although I dont use a text for my course, preferring instead a reader tosupply examples of the concepts being taught, a small but growing numberof Creative Writing textbooks demonstrate that the concept-based CreativeWriting course is gaining ground in higher education. Janet Burroway, authorof the well-known Writing Fiction for example, recently published ImaginativeWriting, a multigenre Creative Writing text anchored in her belief that allwriting is imaginative and . . . different genres share similar sources and buildon similar skills (2003: xv). The first five weeks/chapters of Imaginative Writ-ing focus on five areas Burroway views as foundational to the craft: Image,Voice, Character, Setting, and Story.

Moreover, Hans Ostrom, Katherine Haake and Wendy Bishops Metro: Jour-neys In Writing Creatively is organised, according to its authors, along broadareas of the writing process within which questions of form and technique oftenarise (2001: xv). An exercise-driven text designed to encourage students toexperiment and to produce a high volume of writing, each exercise isaccompanied by a boxed summary that identifies genres being targeted, ideasand concepts [emphasis mine] explored, and a list of authors and works men-tioned (2001: xxi). Finally, Robert DeMarias College Handbook of Creative Writ-ing, first published in 1991 and now in its third edition, offers an exhaustiveguide that is prescient in its organisation not by genre but according to craftissues and in its stated aim not to tell students what to write, but to describehow universal writing problems have been dealt with by experienced writers(2001: ix).

The Power to ChooseAs these texts and Appendix A illustrate, the concept-based course is open

to interpretations that not only offer student choice but also instructor choicein course design. For example, in addition to more universal concepts, suchas lyricism, description, and characterisation, my decision to teach WritingAbout What You Dont Know and Silence and Subtlety arises from, respect-ively, a desire to gently guide students away from a tendency toward obsess-ively self-referential writing, and, in addition, to lead them away from thesentimentality and heavy-handedness that can plague the work of beginningwriters. Spreading these concepts over the typical 1416 week American sem-ester also leaves ample room for other course elements, such as workshopsand reflective writing, that will help students achieve additional key objec-tives, which include an enhanced set of critical reading and responding skillsthat will improve their ability to read their own work and that of others.Organising the course in this manner affords students the opportunity to learn


about craft concepts in depth while at the same time approaching issues ofgenre in the context of their own work. Due to their control over its shape,furthermore, students feel significant ownership of their work, a factor whichcan also enhance the staying power of the lessons they learn about genre.Finally, the organisation of the concept-based course not only homogenisesthe foundation that students receive in the craft of writing, it also allows themto apply what they learn about each concept to their own varied, individualdevelopment as writers.

Although we will undoubtedly share a common subset, another instructorslist of the basic elements of Creative Writing may vary from mine in waysthat reveal her own inclinations and perceptions of her students needs. Conse-quently, at the core of the concept-based course, lies freedom, student freedomin form, expression, and genre within broader, less prescriptive boundaries,and instructor freedom in topic and emphasis. Such freedom can only improvecreativity and provide the kind of depth and knowledge of elemental CreativeWriting craft issues that will equip students with a broad range of transferableskills (Holland, 2003: 4) as they move on to advanced writing courses, andto writing situations in the world beyond the university.

CorrespondenceAny correspondence should be directed to Stephanie Vanderslice, Depart-

ment of Writing and Speech, University of Central Arkansas, 201 DonagheyAvenue, Conway, Arkansas 72035-0001, USA ([email protected]).

ReferencesBishop, W. (1998) Released Into Language: Options for Teaching Creative Writing. Portland,

ME: Calendar Islands.Burroway, J. (2003) Imaginative Writing: The Elements of Craft. New York: Addison, Wes-

ley, Longman.DeMaria, R. (2002) The College Handbook of Creative Writing. Boston: Thomson/Heinle.Holland, S. (2003) Creative Writing: A Good Practice Guide. London: English Subject

Centre.Ostrom, H., Haake, K. and Bishop, W. (2001) Metro: Journeys in Writing Creatively. New

York: Addison, Wesley, Longman.Sarbo, L. and Moxley, J. (1994) Creativity research and classroom practice. In W. Bishop

and H. Ostrom (eds) Colors of a Different Horse: Rethinking Creative Writing Theoryand Pedagogy (pp. 133145). Urbana, IL: NCTE.

Wandor, M. (2003) A Creative Writing manifesto. In Holland, S. (2003) Creative Writing:A Good Practice Guide (pp. 1314). London: English Subject Centre.

Appendix A

Abridged sample syllabus

Concept-based multigenre Creative Writing courseThe author Henry Miller once said, Writing, like life itself, is a voyage of

discovery. Although writing is, for the most part, a solitary act, in this course,we will embark on part of the voyage Miller describes together. This meansthat both as a class and as individuals, we will explore what it means to be


a writer. Not a writer in the commercial, publication sense of the word,although that is certainly a factor in the writers life, but in the sense of onewho writes, who interprets the world through words. The first part of theclass will be spent examining the writers journey and how that journey relatesto each of us. Next we will look at some of the building blocks of good writing,cultivating an eye for detail and enhancing our sensory awareness. From therewe will be working together on writing to be drafted and revised duringworkshop sessions over the course of the semester. We will also examinerevision as a key element of the writing life, as well as look at some otherconsiderations writers must face, such as publication, manuscript preparation,etc. Hopefully, by the end of this journey you will have a better sense of thekinds of writing you might like to study more intensely in future courses, aswell as a better sense of the kind of writer you are and the kind of writeryoud like to be. Inevitably, as Miller describes, you will also have a bettersense of yourself as a person.

Required textA Bound Notebook for Your JournalKnorr, Jeff and Tim Schell, eds. A Writers Country: A Collection of Fiction and

Poetry. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2001. (Referred to as AWC)Minot, Stephen. Literary Nonfiction: The Fourth Genre. Upper Saddle River, NJ:

Prentice Hall: 2003. (Referred to as LNF)Classmates work.

In class writing and journal:To get ideas and practice what we have learned, we will write in class

almost every day. Ill be writing right along with you (I wouldnt want tomiss a chance to catch an errant idea or inspiration), usually in response to adaily writing warm-up. I hope that we can be open about this writing andshare it freely with each other. This means I will be open about reading mywork and I expect you to read from your work from time to time, whenyou choose.

WorkshopsFull class

At one point over the course of the semester, each person will have theopportunity to have a full class critique of her or his work. The week beforethis workshop is due, you will bring in enough copies of your piece for theentire class and for me. You will be able to sign up for a particular workshopand choose any piece you want to workshop before the class.

Writing 1 and 2These are the creative pieces that you will hand in to me during the sem-

ester. They can be in any genre (poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, drama,etc.) that you wish to write in. I would, however, like to see you experiment,so the only requirement of these pieces is that each one be in a different genre.


General guidelines:Poetry: Hand in a minimum of 5 poems. Typed.Fiction, Nonfiction, Drama: Minimum of five pages. Typed. Double-spaced.Note: Full class workshops may be single spaced to minimise copying costs.

PortfolioWell go over this in class, but here are some elements your portfolio.

A Substantial Introduction Which May Discuss: Your progress as a writer this semester. A discussion of the revisions you made to your work. Your responses to the feedback you got from the class and me.

A copy of the best response you wrote this semester, with a detailed expla-nation of why you chose it.

A copy of the most helpful response you received this semester, with adetailed explanation of why it was most helpful.

Final, Revised Copies of Your Writing I, Writing II and Full Class Work-shop piece.

Class ScheduleWeek One Being a Writer. Literacy Autobiography.

Responding to Others Writing, Keeping a Journal.Week Two Lyricism and LanguageWeek Three Description Reading Response Due:

AWC: The Things They Carried, Documentary,LNF: My Fathers Body

Week Four Awakening the Senses Reading Response DueAWC: The Handsomest Drowned Man In theWorld, Green ChileLNF: Jack in the Pulpit

Week Five Full Class WorkshopsWeek Six Stepping Outside Yourself, Writing About What You

Dont Know Reading Response DueAWC: A Good Man Is Hard to Find, Cezanne,Pablo Neruda

Week Seven Beginnings, Endings, TitlesWeek Eight Full Class WorkshopsWeek Nine CharacterisationWeek Ten Dialogue Reading Response Due

AWC: Hills Like White Elephants, BitchLNF: Snakebit

Week Eleven Full Class WorkshopsWeek Twelve Silence, and Subtlety Reading Response Due

(Readings on library reserve)Frederick Busch: Ralph the DuckAmy Hempel: In the Cemetery Where Al Jolsonis Buried

Week Thirteen Full Class WorkshopsWeek Fourteen Revision

the power to choose_multigenre creative writing

Documents