2016 - Fall

Fiction and the Journalist: Narrative and Knowledge (Sec. 1)

Course Number: JOUR-GA 1182.003

Day & Time: Tuesday, 1:00pm-4:00pm

Location: 7th Floor Library

This is a fiction course for journalists–we will discuss writing techniques used in fiction which have been adapted for journalism, and the risks and rewards of those techniques. We’ll read great journalism by people who also write fiction–and some great fiction written by journalists (and about journalists and journalism). We’ll talk about the temptations of fiction, and the traps that await journalists who blur important distinctions. We’ll do reporting exercises and narrative exercises aimed at improved observation, description, prose stylings, and narrative choices. We’ll even write a little fiction. And we’ll use all this to circle back to the questions of how we preserve and honor the essential distinctions between fact and fiction, while developing as reporters, writers, and story-tellers.