Our Trent Con-Ed class is resuming in the New Year, on Jan 14. Registration info here.
Below is the list of workshops. It’s okay to register for one or more workshops for this class, choosing only those you find most interesting.
Writing Speculative Fiction II – Course Instructors: Ursula Pflug and Derek Newman-Stille
Writing Speculative Fiction is a way of imagining the world in new and creative ways, using your full imagination to see the world through a creative and speculative (questioning) lens. In this course, award winning author Ursula Pflug and award winning academic and blogger Derek Newman-Stille will creatively work with you to bring out your creative potential and give you the skills to find your own voice and turn it into written work.
Using the techniques of speculative fiction (science fiction, fantasy, horror), we will work on imagining possibilities and new magical, futuristic, or horrifying ways of seeing and envisioning the world around you. We will explore a variety of forms of writing, with a general focus on writing short fiction. Our techniques will vary from class to class, bringing out different ways of imagining new possibilities.
Students will have the opportunity to engage in workshops related to areas such as character development, dialogue, descriptions and the senses, constructing metaphors and similes, and techniques for seeking inspiration, as well as techniques specifically related to speculative fiction such as speculative futurisms, engaging with the mythic, and creating speculative twists to ordinary experience.
This course is open to creative writing beginners, those wanting a refresher, and established writers wanting some new techniques for writing.
Course Fee: All eight workshops/classes – $160.00 + 20.80 H.S.T. = $180.80 OR the cost of each workshop/class is $20.00 + 2.60 H.S.T. = $22.60
Classes will be held: Thursdays, January 14th – March 3rd – Wallis Hall, 226 (Traill College), 7:00 – 9:00 p.m.
January 14 – What Ifs
Students will begin with the general question “What If” and its relationship to speculative fiction and the imagination. Science fiction has been called the literature of ideas, always asking the next question. What if aliens come to earth? What if the nazis had won the second world war? What if artificial intelligence becomes more powerful than human intelligence? What if our genders altered according to the season? What if there were more accepted genders? What if dragons were/are real? Students will draw up possible What If scenarios, describing the future, alternate realities, or alternate versions of history. How do we people these scenarios to make them engaging for the reader? Students will explore the power of questions to guide their fiction and evoke new imaginings.
January 21 – Being Inspired by Place – Fantastic Geographies and Setting
Using images from various fantastic locations, students will explore the way that geographies and certain spaces create an atmosphere for a story. Experiencing different locations, students will imagine stories that arise from these settings, determining the types of plots that could happen in them, the types of characters who would use those locations, and the way that the spaces themselves are storied (filled with potential tales).
January 28 – Fan Fiction – Subverting Literature
Students will be asked to bring in a favourite book, short story, film, or television series. They will be asked to imagine these stories from the perspective of a different character an under- represented character, a villain, etc. Students will be asked to use their imagination and critical thinking skills to subvert this narrative, imagining possibilities that the writer of the original material didn’t think about or couldn’t write about because of public pressures. Students will operate in the mindset of “what if”, exploring new perspectives and opportunities. This will also provide students with the skills to flush out an existing world and explore the power of writing to change narratives.
February 4 – Apocalypses – Imagining the End
Students will be asked to think of a possible end of the world scenario and flush out this apocalyptic world while imagining how protagonists can survive. Students will have a chance to explore what the character will need to change in order to respond to a changing world, explore what kinds of characters could adapt to an apocalyptic scenario, and examine how the character is emotionally changed by the experience. Students will also have a chance to consider the ways that apocalyptic stories can tell us a lot about the issues and anxieties we have in the present and the way that we invest these ideas with notions about the impact they will have on the future.
February 11 – Life Is Stranger Than Fiction
To help students to explore the way that the real lives of authors can inspire stories, students will have a chance to share their own stories of the strange and unusual (those moments that no one would believe was real) and then expand on the oddity of these stories, examining their potential for truly strange fiction.
February 18 – Perceptions, Senses, and Different Ways to Describe a Scene
Constructions of settings are generally heavily visual. Students will be led through a process of looking into their other senses to try to create a scene that encompasses the aural environment, scent, touch, and even taste. To help to facilitate this process, students will be asked to blindfold themselves to decrease their reliance on the visual.
February 25 – The Art of Speculative Fiction – Ekphrastic Writing
Students will have the opportunity to bring in their favourite piece of fantastic art and then imagine that art piece in motion, populated with characters, each with their own stories. Students will be able to think about the way that art can inspire the telling of stories.
March 3 – Epistolary Stories
The letter has been an important media for conveying stories. Students will have a chance to explore the power of the letter for telling a story through correspondence. Students will then be given a chance to collaborate on an epistolary story by writing the first letter and then having another student assume the character of the person who is being written to and then write back.
About the Instructors: Ursula Pflug is the award winning author of the novels Green Music, The Alphabet Stones, and Motion Sickness, as well as the story collections After the Fires and Harvesting the Moon. Her first edited book, the fundraiser anthology They Have To Take You In, was recently released. Her short stories and reviews, mainly about books and art, appear regularly in Canada, the US and the UK. Her short fiction has been taught at universities in Canada and India. Pflug has also written for film and theatre, and has received numerous Canada Council, Ontario Arts Council and Laidlaw Foundation grants in support of her novels, short fiction and plays. Ursula Pflug has taught creative writing workshops with a focus on script-writing or short fiction at Trinity Square Video, the Young Author’s Conference, The Word is Wild Literary Festival and elsewhere since 1985. She has taught Continuing Education Courses in short fiction writing at Loyalist College (Campbellford Campus) and at the Campbellford Resource Centre since 2009.
Derek Newman-Stille is the three time Aurora Award Winning creator of the Speculating Canada website and runs the reading series ChiSeries Peterborough as well as a radio programme on Canadian speculative fiction. Derek has taught courses on werewolves in literature and witchcraft in the Greek and Roman world. Derek has published academic articles on speculative fiction in venues like Mosaic and The Canadian Fantastic in Focus. He has given academic papers at conferences such as the Academic Conference on Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy, the International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts, the Mid-Atlantic Popular and American Culture Association, and the Canadian Popular Culture Association.