J298 Story Structures

In this class, we’ll learn about story architecture – how to craft your material to give it tone, meaning and style, and how to choose a structure that best matches your materials, reporting constraints and artistic intentions. In our 15 weeks together, we’ll examine 13 commonly-used structures to understand how they are constructed and what effects they can achieve. Once we’ve got those down, we’ll use our final two classes to look at some experimenters who are blowing up the rules. We’ll be studying work in all media – documentaries, podcasts, magazines and newspaper articles, multimedia presentations, even a bit of VR. Students from any year and any media track are welcome! This is a discussion seminar and workshop — each student will workshop two of their own reported pieces with the class. (These can be pieces you are reporting for other spring classes, for your masters thesis, or for freelance assignments. You are highly encouraged to “double dip” your assignments for Story Structures with work in another course!)