Course description

Before the novel was the novella. In length, the form offers what Edgar Allan Poe defines as the ideal duration of literary art—it can be read in a single sitting—and, in unity of effect, what Ian McEwan has called the perfect form of prose fiction. With a long literary history, the novella remains today a popular genre in literary publishing. This course offers students the chance to study and practice the art of the novella. Students read masterful examples of the form from writers including Jane Austen, Herman Melville, Henry James, Isak Dinesen, Yasunari Kawabata, James Baldwin, Italo Svevo, and James Joyce. We discuss these texts with the eye of a writer attentive to elements of craft: dramatic structure, tone, point of view, suspense, prose style, rhythm, characterization, and plotting. Students draft and workshop two sections of their own novella. Working in this genre pushes students to write with economy and to polish their sentences as they aspire towards the virtues of excellent prose fiction: precision, economy, clarity, and urgency. The course concludes with a conversation about publishing possibilities for novella writers.

Instructors

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Blended

This Harvard Medical School one-year, application-based certificate program is designed to help clinicians, researchers and allied health professionals achieve their writing career goals.

Price
$14,900 - $15,900
Registration Deadline