Creative writing: an introduction to writing comic fiction

An open comic book lying on a glass table, with a black mug of coffee beside it and a pair of round glasses resting on the comic’s pages.

Course Dates

Key Features

Welcome week (Week 0)

Purpose:

personal introductions
introducing the course
useful reading
personal objectives

Learning outcomes:

By studying this week, the students should have:

become familiar with navigating around the Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) and from VLE to links and back
test your ability to access files and the web conferencing software and sort out any problems with the help of the Technology Enhanced Learning team
learn how to look for, assess and reference internet resources
contribute to a discussion forum to introduce yourself to other students and discuss why you are interested in the course and what you hope to get out of your studies

Week 1: 'No, but seriously...': comedy in narrative fiction

Purpose:

Participants will gain a high-level understanding of the history of comedy from Aristophanes and Aristotle through to the present-day. How has the ‘comic hero’ developed over the centuries? What are the core sub-genres of comedy today (farce, satire, romantic comedy, postmodern), and what are their identifying features. The primordial importance of humour in fiction-writing will be emphasised. According to Sigmund Freud, joking can be defined as the ability to find similarity between dissimilar things. The same definition applies to metaphor-creation and perhaps literature itself: ‘the writer’s task,’ John Updike wrote, ‘is the perception of connections between unlike things. Supplementary materials will be provided, notably PDF copies of P.G. Wodehouse’s short story, ‘Unpleasantness at Bludleigh Court’, and excerpts from Freud’s Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious.

Learning outcomes:

By studying this week the participants should have:

acquired a basic understanding of the origins and recurring patterns of narrative storytelling (‘universal structure’) and specifically comic fiction
discussed key features, readerly pleasures, and possible limitations of the ‘flat’ comic character
studied illustrative passages from inter alia Cervantes, Shakespeare, and P.G. Wodehouse, along with excerpts from craft texts such as Into the Woods: How Stories Work and Why We Tell Them by John Yorke, Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting by Syd Field and The Art of Fiction by John Gardner

Teaching Week 2: Characterisation in comic fiction

Purpose:

At the end of Week 1’s presentation, participants consider the ‘flat’ hero of light fiction designed merely to divert and amuse. This week we look at satirical fiction that grapples with the darker side of human nature. Participants will examine how more ‘rounded’ fictional characters enable writers from Jane Austen to National-Book-Award-winner Jonathan Franzen and Booker-Prize-winner Paul Beatty to achieve tragicomic effects in their novels As in other modes of fiction, character roundness or depth is related to the concept of desire. There are two strands to desire: the character’s ‘want’ versus his or her ‘need’. Addressing the protagonist’s unconscious need during a story leads to psychological change. Not only is a rounded, tragic-comic character more complex, but the juxtaposition of light and shade has stylistic benefits. By placing them in proximity, Nabokov and other great writers knew that the funny thing becomes funnier and the sad thing sadder. Various novel excerpts will be considered to stimulate discussion about characterisation in comic fiction, including but not limited to Emma, The Corrections, Pnin, The Sellout, and the ‘post-comic’ stand-up artistry of Hannah Gadsby.

Learning outcomes:

By studying this week participants should have:

learned to create compelling protagonists in comic fiction by understanding how character depth and tragicomic story development are linked
discussed specific passages from comic novels where the complexity of the character is established and develop to humorous effect
completed a character-based writing exercise

Teaching Week 3: Dialogue in comic fiction

Purpose:

Effective comic dialogue is about more than a powerful punchline. As in any form of fiction, it must also develop plot and reveal character. In this sense this week’s focus on dialogue will build on matters of structure and character considered previously in the course. Participants will read selected dialogue from a range of comic fiction and examine what effects are being achieved and how. This range of dialogue will cover everything from old-fashioned comic realist social observation (The Line of Beauty and The God of Small Things), to contemporary deadpan (Convenience Store Woman and My Year of Rest and Relaxation), tragicomic wordplay (The Crying of Lot 49 and Who Will Run the Frog Hospital?), and what might be called lightly fictionalised memoir (Naked, A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again, [Priestdaddy?]). The comic benefits of direct versus reported speech, or a combination of the two, will also be considered. A writing exercise will provide participants with the opportunity to develop their dialogue skills in their own creative work.

Learning outcomes

By studying this week participants should have:

performed close readings of dialogue-heavy excerpts from selected comic novels and short stories
developed a critical understanding of the strategic possibilities and effects of good dialogue in comic fiction beyond conveying information
put into practice this critical understanding with a short piece of creative work

Teaching Week 4: Narrative point-of-view in comic fiction

Purpose:

This week we will examine how narrative point-of-view can be deployed for comic effect in both (a) conventional realist fiction and (b) surrealist-influenced or postmodern fiction. Using an unreliable narrator is a reliably comic technique: the gap between the narrator’s perception of events and those of the reader can be exploited for humorous effects. In more avant-garde writing, a self-conscious narrator (like the narrator of Laurence Sterne’s 1759 Tristram Shandy) can comically call attention to the artificiality of the text. Other innovative uses of POV include the second-person narrators of Lorrie Moore’s short stories and the chorus-like “we” of Donald Barthelme’s much-anthologised ‘The School’. Participants will further develop their thinking about plot and character from the first two weeks of the course. How is a novel’s plot shaped by narrative proximity or distance from its characters.

Learning outcomes:

By studying this week, participants should have:

understood the comic advantages of employing different narratives voices and perspectives
studied excerpts from acclaimed comic novels and short stories that use different POV modes, including work by Lorrie Moore, Edward St Aubyn, Zadie Smith, and Donald Barthelme
experimented with writing in ‘close third’, second person, unreliable first person et cetera

Teaching Week 5: Openings and endings in comfic fiction

Purpose:

In this final week, we will think about what makes for effective beginnings and endings in the comic novel. Starting with the former, what is the purpose of a first sentence, beginning paragraph, opening page…? Participants will consider the importance of the comic set-up as a narrative strategy. Examples from long and short fiction will be considered. The ending of a story, according to 2017 Booker-Prize-winner George Saunders, should ‘satisfy (the reader’s) expectation in a way that’s both complicated and non-random.’ How might we satisfy the complicated and non-random requirement in modern comic writing? We will finish the course by returning to notions of story structure (notably the question of synthesis/resolution) examined in week 1.

Learning outcomes:

By studying this week participants should have:

analysed the nature and objectives of effective novel openings and endings
completed a writing exercise on first sentence/paragraph and conclusion of a comic story
studied and discussed a range of examples from comic fiction