Narrative Theory and Practice

Course summary: Learn how structure, time, character, theme, viewpoint, dialogue, and experimental form shape a reader’s experience. Develop and revise a complete 1,500–2,000-word narrative with a craft commentary and review portfolio.

This course turns narrative theory into choices you can test on the page. You will study familiar structures, try other ways of arranging events, and discover how a story changes when you change its teller, pace, or form. Theory here means an organized way to ask questions about stories. It supplies useful tools, not rules that every story must obey.

Intended students and prerequisites: This course serves adult beginning and developing writers of fiction and personal narrative. You should be able to write a clear paragraph and save a draft. No previous study of literary theory is required. Fiction is the default for the invented demonstrations. If you choose nonfiction, preserve factual accuracy, mark uncertain memories, and verify quotations and factual claims. A theory about interpretation never gives permission to invent nonfiction evidence.

Overall outcomes: Identify a narrative’s events and telling order; compare three structural models; draft controlled time and viewpoint shifts; connect character decisions with consequences; develop a theme through scenes; revise dialogue and pacing; evaluate an experimental form; give evidence-based feedback; and produce a complete revised narrative with an explanation of its craft choices.

Workload and portfolio: Allow about 50–70 hours, usually two lessons a week over twenty weeks or four lessons a week over ten weeks. These are planning estimates. Save each lesson’s submission under its lesson number. Early exercises are small experiments; later exercises develop one project. You may reuse and revise your own earlier passages. Do not add every exercise to the final narrative. The final portfolio contains a 1,500–2,000-word narrative, a 300–400-word craft commentary, a one-page event and telling-order outline, one review you gave or a structured self-review, a revision log, and a 5–10-minute presentation or its 600–1,000-word script.

AI collaboration and privacy: You originate the material and make all creative decisions. Optional AI requests in this course ask for comparisons, questions, or diagnoses of a selected excerpt. Approve the material you share, remove confidential details, and remember that an online AI service processes submitted text off site. Do not ask AI to invent memories, evidence, quotations, or peer responses. A reader, a read-aloud pass, or the specified paper exercise can replace each optional AI activity. Disclose substantial AI-generated wording if you choose to retain any, and follow your intended venue’s rules.

Completion and assessment: Complete all forty lesson submissions and the final portfolio. Self-check guidance supports revision before submission; it does not require a single artistic answer. Retain drafts so you can show at least two substantial revisions. The capstone uses the 100-point rubric inside Lesson 10.4. A score of 75 or higher and all required components constitute completion under this course’s teaching plan. A missing component or a score below 75 calls for revision and resubmission. This is a course assessment standard, not a claim about accreditation or automatic platform grading.