Plot, the absolute line between two points which I’ve always despised. Not for literary reasons, but because it takes all hope away. Everyone, real or invented, deserves the open destiny of life, says short story writer Grace Paley to her elderly father when he complains that she should write a regular story, with a beginning, middle, and end. In this course we’ll read and write prose fiction that minimizes the age-old literary device of plot. We’ll explore other strategies that hold a narrative together such as dialogue, character, point of view, setting, collage, and language placement. Our work will take us to other art forms that use narrative, especially photography. We may examine such writers as Paley, Carver, Chekhov, Cortazar, Hemingway, Kinkaid, Berlin, Valenzuela, and others.

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