|
|
|
|
 |
Seton Hill University
Graduate Admissions
Laurel Komarny
Program Counselor
Seton Hill University
1 Seton Hill Drive
Box 510F
Greensburg, PA 15601
(724) 838-4209 (phone)
(800) 826-6234 (toll free)
(724) 830-1891 (fax)
lkomarny@setonhill.edu
For more information about the field of writing and the Seton Hill University graduate Writing Popular Fiction program contact:
Writing Popular Fiction
Program Director
Dr. Albert Wendland
Seton Hill University
1 Seton Hill Drive
Box 468F
Greensburg, PA 15601
(724) 830-1019 (phone)
wendland@setonhill.edu
|
|
|
|
 |
Sample Modules
A selection of modules from recent residencies...
THE BUSINESS OF WRITING
Writers are entrepreneurs, in business for themselves, but this business is unlike any other. Learn about submitting work for publication, record-keeping, and financial issues that can mean the difference between success and failure. Find out how to sell without selling out and how to deal with and learn from rejection. This crash course covers publishing etiquette, queries, taxes, record-keeping, making a living, and working with editors and agents.
WRITING THE YA SERIES MYSTERY
Penning book-length fiction both lively enough for teens yet suspenseful enough to hook mystery-lovers means knowing your series well. Most particulars are easy to learn: the when and where of setting, who recurring characters are, and which story lines have been used. Other guidelines can be tricky: style, tone, pacing and humor (is there humor? Teens do tend to smile upon it). Writing for this genre-hybrid means including cliff-hangers, red herrings, mistaken identity and other favored devices, but also considering appropriate language, not-too-graphic violence and toned-down suggestions of sexual content. Come explore these and other aspects of young adult mystery writing - including how to write an eye-catching outline - in this first-time-offered module.
FROM THE NOVEL TO THE SCREENPLAY
A hands-on class where students will learn how to adapt their book to the big screen. A discussion will focus on the art of the screenplay (dialogue, formatting, structure, character) and the mechanics of selling the completed work (joining the Writers Guild, finding an agent, options, movie vs. life rights). Workshop will include adapting a fiction sample to a page of screenplay, plus how to write tag lines and short treatments, with group critiques of each. While the module focuses on screen writing, writing techniques covered will improve general fiction-writing skills as well.
USING PERSONAL EXPERIENCE/SETTING, Albert Wendland
Question: "How can I write about what I don't know?" Answer: Write what you DO know, and stretch it. Students will learn to mine their pasts, to build on their personal experience for creation. We'll also cover how to bring a setting to life. Whether a street in your hometown or an alien planet, the key to setting is sensory experience. In this workshop, students will focus on "sensation" to use their own lives for writing and to make their settings stronger.
ADVANCED POV FOR ROMANCE WRITERS, Barbara Miller
The romance genre has special point of view needs and problems. Learn how to deepen point of view and draw the reader into each character at the right moment. Get the reader's empathy for the hero's point of view. Learn when to use shallow and secondary points of view. Write gripping synopses and make point of view work for you in your novel.
MARKETING SCIENCE FICTION AND RECENT TRENDS, Lawrence Connolly
Through an analysis of recently published science fiction, fantasy and horror novels and short stories as well as other media (movies, TV, internet publishing), we will explore contemporary directions of writing in the genre: what's in, what's out, and where it can be published.
|
|
|
|
