2021-2022 Undergraduate Catalog [ARCHIVED CATALOG]
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EN 280 World Building Workshop
In fantasy and science fiction, readers and writers often marvel at the complexity of the worlds writers create. Writers in these genres use these worlds to provide escapist and exotic landscapes as backdrops to their fiction. But “world building” in fiction is more complex than this; truly well‐built worlds are deeply interconnected to the ecology, history, social fabric, and cultures of invented landscapes, and the process of building worlds in fiction impacts virtually every facet of writing, from characterization and detail to motive, conflict and subtext.
This workshop course is designed to develop students’ awareness and attunement to elements of craft in fiction, particularly building believable, engaging worlds in science fiction and fantasy. Students will study established and emerging literary craft and trends, consider real‐life case studies in practicing consequential thinking and sociological imagination in genre writing, and create original works of fiction that both utilize and further develop the worlds that students create.
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