Hi all,

A reminder that our last class will be held once again at Books & Co.

We will begin at 6:30 with readings by you. I had a sign-up sheet for readers last class but many of you missed class. So we signed you up! Just kidding! Send me an email if you would like to read from your work to the class. It is a great opportunity to practice this skill. I will have some snacks for us there but please feel free to bring food potluck style.

Then, at 8:00 Hiromi Goto will read.

I will be collecting portfolios and you will do course evaluations (don't let me forget!).

I mentioned this last class but I will repeat it: Because of deadlines for my submission of marks to the Registrar's office, I have to be firm about the April 2 deadline. I will have final marks by April 10.

Email if you have any questions.

Rob

"Hello!
I am writing on behalf of the intermediate staff and students of Highglen Montessori.  At Highglen, we have several student writers who are currently working independently on creative writing projects that they hope to publish through the school.

I was hoping that you could help us by putting the call out to students with strong writing skills to come to Highglen Montessori as volunteer editors.  The Highglen students would prepare a piece of writing that they are hoping to publish, and student volunteers would work with them on editing and polishing their work.  The volunteers would edit the Highglen students’ work for grammar, punctuation, idea development and voice.

We would like to arrange for these sessions as soon as possible.  UNBC students would be welcome to schedule their time at Highglen between the hours of 9am and 2pm, according to the volunteer’s availability.  Volunteer students who are interested in helping out should be able to offer ongoing support to the Highglen students. Our hope is that a working relationship between students and volunteers can be developed over the remainder of the year, and hopefully extending into the following year, as well.

At the end of their time with the Highglen students, each student volunteer would be provided with a letter of support from our school’s principal.  This is a great opportunity for students to connect with the community and begin to build their skills, experience and resume for their future careers!

Please have students email me for further information at:
jdaley@sd57.bc.ca

Thank you for your time!
Jennifer Daley"
        

Quite a few of you mentioned you wanted some more instruction on Science Fiction and Fantasy. It is looking like we won't have time in class, so I'd thought I'd post some basics here.

The overarching term is "Speculative Fiction" and there are many sub-genres. The major difference in terms of writerly approach to these genres is the importance of world building in your pre-writing stages. In all the sub-genres there will be distinguishing features that set the scifi/fantasy world apart from Earth 2012. It is important that the writer get that world rich and consistent as they work through the narrative. Here are some classic examples (always good to know the history of a form/genre) and some sub-categories.

Fantasy

John Ruskin's The King of the Golden River (1841), George MacDonald, The Princess and the Goblin and Phantastes (1858),

Rudyard Kipling and Edgar Rice Burroughs. Abraham Merritt, Peter Pan and The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

Robert E. Howard's Conan the Barbarian and Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories.[8]

C. S. Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia

J. R. R. Tolkien's The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings in the late 1960s,

Ursula K. Le Guin's Earthsea

 some types:

Medieval (”Sword and Sorcery”)

Paranormal/Supernatural Romance

Urban Fantasy

Science Fantasy

Historical

Science Fiction

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, first published in 1818.

Victor Hugo wrote in The Legend of the Centuries (1859)

Jules Verne and the science-oriented novels of social criticism of H. G. Wells. Verne's adventure stories, notably A Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864),

George Orwell wrote perhaps the most highly regarded of literary dystopias, Nineteen Eighty-Four, in 1948. He envisions a technologically governed totalitarian regime that dominates society through total information control.

Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, Ursula K. Le Guin's The Dispossessed,

(1965) Frank Herbert's Dune: a dense, complex, and detailed work of fiction featuring political intrigue in a future galaxy, strange and mystical religious beliefs, and the eco-system of the desert planet Arrakis.

William Gibson's Neuromancer, published in 1984, announced the cyberpunk movement to the larger literary world and was a tremendous commercial success. Other key writers in the movement included Bruce Sterling, John Shirley, and later Neal Stephenson.

some types:

Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction

Hard science fiction (science heavy)

Soft science fiction

Space opera

Cyberpunk and Steampunk

Hi all, 

Just a reminder to bring a hard copy of the first 1 - 2 pages of any fiction piece you would like Virginia O'Dine to assess on the spot tonight. It is optional but a great opportunity to have a seasoned editor look at your work and make comments. She will assess them anonymously. 

Just a reminder that the class will be meeting at Books & Co. at 7:00 next class (Monday, March 12). After the event there will be time for workshopping so send work to your group as normal. I was seeing a lot of groups reading on the spot last class; please have the work read and write responses before class so that you can use your workshopping time efficiently.

Have a productive, creative week!

REALISM:   Broadly defined as "the faithful representation of reality" or

"verisimilitude," realism is a literary technique practiced by many schools of writing. Although strictly speaking, realism is a technique, it also denotes a particular kind of subject matter, especially the representation of middle-class life. A reaction against romanticism, an interest in scientific method, the systematizing of the study of documentary history, and the influence of rational philosophy all affected the rise of realism.

According to William Harmon and Hugh Holman, "Where romanticists transcend the immediate to find the ideal, and naturalists plumb the actual or superficial to find the scientific laws that control its actions, realists center their attention to a remarkable degree on the immediate, the here and now, the specific action, and the verifiable consequence" (A Handbook to Literature 428).

Characteristics

(from Richard Chase, The American Novel and Its Tradition)

Renders reality closely and in comprehensive detail. Selective presentation of reality with an emphasis on verisimilitude, even at the expense of a well-made plot.

Character is more important than action and plot; complex ethical choices are often the subject. Characters appear in their real complexity of temperament and motive; they are in explicable relation to nature, to each other, to their social class, to their own past.

Events will usually be plausible. Realistic novels avoid the sensational,

dramatic elements of naturalistic novels and romances.

Diction is natural vernacular, not heightened or poetic; tone may be comic, satiric, or matter-of-fact.

Objectivity in presentation becomes increasingly important: overt authorial comments or intrusions diminish