Any questions about this course can be directed to nonfiction@p2pu.org.

 

 

Course Title: Open Creative Nonfiction - Take Away Narratives

 

Sense-Maker: Thomas Farber

 Bio: Thomas Farber is an author, publisher, and senior lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley. He has published both fiction and nonfiction works, but his passion is in the art of creative nonfiction.

From his website @ http://www.thomasfarber.org --

"Awarded Guggenheim and, three times, National Endowment fellowships for fiction and creative nonfiction, Thomas Farber has been a Fulbright Scholar, recipient of the Dorothea Lange-Paul Taylor Prize, and Rockefeller Foundation scholar at Bellagio. His recent books include The Beholder, A Lover's Question: Selected Stories, and, with photographer Wayne Levin, Other Oceans. Former Visiting Distinguished Writer at the University of Hawai'i, he teaches at the University of California, Berkeley, and is also Publisher of El León Literary Arts."

 

Course Organizer: Jane Park, nonfiction@p2pu.org

 Bio:  Jane is the Communications Coordinator for ccLearn at Creative Commons, a nonprofit working to free intellectual property on the web. She received her BA in Philosophy and minor in Creative Writing at the University of California, Berkeley. She has also worked with the National Writing Project, a nonprofit working to improve student achievement through the teaching of writing in schools.

 

What is creative nonfiction?

 

This course concerns the writing of creative nonfiction, which involves the writing of true life events in creative form. Creativity comes into play with the style or manner in which the writer relates her story to the reader. Facts are raw, but also contextual. In creative nonfiction, context is perspective; and perspective is what makes a story interesting. Essentially, creative nonfiction is very similar (and some might even say nearly the same) to fiction; the main difference is whether the facts in the story concur with the facts in real life. In this course, we will explore the distance, or proximity, between fiction and nonfiction.

 

Theme for the Course

 

In order to explore and create the context for facts, this course will focus on a single theme for the entire duration of the six week course. Each week, students, or peers, will write on this theme from the third person point of view. There will be no "I", but a "he" or a "she" that observes and drives the literary perspective of the subject matter. The theme for this course is Take Away Narratives. The name, Take Away Narratives, is based on the "Take Away Shows," an idea by French art producer and filmmaker Vincent Moon (See La Blogotheque). The idea behind Take Away Narratives is loosely similar to the "Take Away Shows," and is also based on Thomas Farber's theme of "Rooms and Lives." The "Take Away Shows" focus on the spontaneity, and thus creativity, that occurs out of placing musicians in random, everyday places, such as streets, elevators, stairs. Take Away Narratives involves this same premise by placing writers in open, or enclosed, spaces.

 

Each writer will choose a place, any place, whether it be a specific room in her history, the street corner where she purchases groceries, or the botanical garden she visited one summer. The facts the writer observes or remembers will be extracted from his situation and funneled into essays from the third person point of view. Spontaneity and experimentation is encouraged in the first draft, as heavy revision will be required in later drafts. Each week, the writer will return to the same place and create new material, in this way adhering to a constant over time. One goal is to uncover something new about the self, the situation, the time, or some one else--by exploring the various facets of a space. One can also say that the "take away" in Take Away Narratives refers to the distance between writer and self effected by the third person P.O.V. In Take Away Narratives, the writer projects himself physically in space and mentally in writing. We will cover these distances in our critiques and discussions, all the while asking the question---where, in this (these) space(s), does fact and fiction merge?

Basic writing structures, such as point of view, conflict, and plot, will not be taught in this course. This is mainly because one learns more by writing in six weeks than by listening to lectures on what makes a good story. Also, literature on the basic writing structures is abundant everywhere and can easily be self-taught. The point of the course is to encourage peer-to-peer interaction and feedback on one another's work.

 

 Target Group 

 

We are interested in cultivating a group of diverse persons of all ages and from all walks of life. Although degrees and curriculum vitae do not carry much weight here, a familiarity with the basic structures of writing such as point of view, plot, conflict, and the like are preferred. Persons should possess  a keen interest and willingness to tell a true story about the world through the exercise of one's creative faculties. In order to fully contribute to and gain from this course, an open mind and community spirit is necessary, as we will be employing alternative methods of writing nonfiction and will be critiquing each other's work heavily and thoughtfully.

 

This is not a course in journalism or new media.

 

Introduction Text for Participants

 

Revisiting the scene of the crime....

 

Images

• Share photos of your place.

 

Resources

• Video with Thomas Farber - ?
• Essay - third person.

 

Tasks

• Your Writing exercise - Observation (in the third person)
  • Revisit the place you chose last week. Observe and write what you will in the third person, about yourself.
  • It must be six or more pages. 
  • Ideas to consider:

     

    Have you tried striking up a conversation with a person in the place? Associated with the place? Looked up the history of the place or talked to people that know of the history? Have you tried an activity (ie. played basketball if it's a park, went on a hike, eaten a sandwich, cleaned, etc.). Thought of memories you have had, or might have, in this place?

• Review your min-peer groups' drafts. Submit comments to said persons. (you will only be reviewing 2-3 people's drafts. this will rotate from week to week.)

 

Discussion Questions

• Reactions to Farber's video

• Reactions to writing in the third person; what distance from your self did it forge? What sensation did it evoke?
• reactions to peers' recommendations.

 

Additional Resources

• List of writing sites, guides
• List of nonfiction writers, works, etc.
• Ultimately putting yourself in another's shoes: your own as when looked at almost objectively in the third person. See "Black Like Me", something that happens to the fullest extent when John Howard Griffin, a white American writer during the civil rights movement, does when he deliberately changes his skin color to see what it is like to experience life as a black man.
• each week two people recommend a writer or a story.

 

Week 3

 

Introduction Text for Participants

 

Again, revisit the scene of the crime....

 

Images

• photos from your peer group for the story you are critiquing.

 

Resources

• Video with Thomas Farber - ?
• Photos from last week, to contrast. Peers' feedback.

 

Tasks

• Your Writing exercise - Observation (in the third person) of the place at a different time of day
  • Revisit the place you chose last week. Observe a different aspect of the place, from third person. Be creative. (in present concrete form, or history, or reflection, or reaction)
  • It must be six or more pages. 
  • Ideas to consider:

     

    ?

• Take pictures at this different time of day, at a different angle, light, camera setting, view point.
• Reflect on how this changes your opinion and/or view of the place. Is it more ominous? Less? Do the people and/or things that inhabit it change in character? Does it invoke different feelings or memories? Is it more beautiful or more ugly?
• in-peer groups' drafts. Submit comments and questions to said persons. (you will only be reviewing 2-3 people's drafts. this will rotate from week to week.)

 

Discussion Questions

• Reactions to Farber's video

• Reactions to writing in the third person; what distance from your self did it forge? What sensation did it evoke?
• reactions to peers' recommendations.

 

Additional Resources

• List of writing sites, guides
• List of nonfiction writers, works, etc.
• each week two people recommend a writer or a story.

 

Week 4

 

Introduction Text for Participants

 

Again, revisit the scene of the crime....

 

Images

• photos of different perspective from peer group you are critiquing.

 

Resources

• some nonfiction media, open source
• some writing
• photos from last week

 

Tasks

• Your Writing exercise - Observation (in the third person) of the place again; this time bring a third party (person or other animal).
  • It must be six or more pages. 
  • Ideas to consider:

     

    ?

• Take pictures again, but this time with this third party (or have third party take it of you and place)
• in-peer groups' drafts. Submit comments to said persons. (you will only be reviewing 2-3 people's drafts. this will rotate from week to week.)

 

Discussion Questions

• How does it feel to share this place with some one/thing else?
• reactions to peers' recommendations.

 

Additional Resources

• List of writing sites, guides
• List of nonfiction writers, works, etc.
• each week two people recommend a writer or a story.

 

Week 5

 

Introduction Text for Participants

 

A lot of writing. Don't revisit place. Use your memory and imagination. Use any other resource, the Internet, the person/thing you took last week.

 

Images

• photos of different perspective from peer group you are critiquing.

 

Resources

• some nonfiction interviews
• the third party
• photos from last week

 

Tasks

• Your Writing exercise - Interview (or memory, if the third party you took was not a person). Interview the third party and write what they say about the place, what kind of things it invoked in them. Task is to think of meaningful or pertinent questions to yourself and your own situation OR to the party's self and situation. How do you gain a story out of this?
  • It must be six or more pages. 
  • Ideas to consider:

     

    ?

  • If it is more helpful for you to write this in the first person, go ahead. 
  • feel free to document interview in any way you want (provided you get consent). video, audio, old-fashioned pen and paper. etc.
• in-peer groups' drafts. Submit comments to said persons. (you will only be reviewing 2-3 people's drafts. this will rotate from week to week.)

 

Discussion Questions

• How does this experience, gleaning a story from someone else, compare to simply writing on your own?
• reactions to peers' recommendations.

 

Additional Resources

• List of writing sites, guides
• List of nonfiction writers, works, etc.
• each week two people recommend a writer or a story.

 

Week 6

 

Introduction Text for Participants

 

This is where you get creative. Where you synthesize, or choose.

 

Images

• photos of different perspective from peer group you are critiquing.

 

Resources

• All the stuff you've done before. Your creative material.

 

Tasks

• Revisit place. Use place for inspiration.
• Synthesize or choose. What compelling story can you pull from all of this?
• Write new, or revise old, based on past critiques, current inspiration, etc. Submit your final draft of no less than six pages, no more than the number of pages you have written in sum.
• Take one last picture. However you like it.
• review everyone's final draft. one page critiques all around (10-12 MS's)

 

Discussion Questions

• How did it feel to cut, revise, start afresh, etc.?
• What did you learn about your own creative process?
• reactions to peers' recommendations.

 

Additional Resources

• List of writing sites, guides
• List of nonfiction writers, works, etc.
• each week two people recommend a writer or a story.