4-Week: Making it Magical

From Gabriel García-Marquez to Angela Carter, Louise Erdrich to Haruki Murakami, many of our greatest fiction writers incorporate the magical into their stories. What does this do for their work? From where do they draw inspiration? And most importantly, how do they do it so convincingly? In this four-week class, we’ll look closely at—and experiment with—some of the techniques and strategies writers use to make their work magical. We’ll play around with diction, syntax, voice, and setting. We’ll hunt down new resources and tap into our own personal mythologies. We’ll explore how to make the familiar unfamiliar. And we’ll give ourselves free rein to reimagine the metaphorical into the actual. Come prepared to read, write, and revise.