When I think of India, I envision Mrs. Rupa Mehra, the large and generous matriarch of Seth Vikam’s A Suitable Boy, travelling from friends to relatives on the hot and bumpy transcontinental railway, carrying bags of spices and a knitting bag full of greeting cards. When I think about colonial Zimbabwe, I picture Martha Quest, Doris Lessing’s Children of Violence heroine, as a restless teenager sitting on a hot tin-roofed porch, feeling stifled by the heat and even more stifled by the adults’ talk about kaffirs and the color line. These writers have created vivid characters who live in real places, so vivid and real that I know them the way I know my friends and the town where I live. Far more than from the newspapers, it is primarily through fiction that I have come to understand other countries and cultures. That’s because fiction fills in the "people" details: what they wear, what they eat, how they relate to one another. It has been said that "Newspapers give you the facts; fiction tells you the truth." Journalism gives you the who, what, when and where, but fiction tells you the why. And when it does it well, it does so with so much color, passion and feeling that the reader transcends time and space to inhabit the writer’s imaginative universe.

In this class we’ll learn to create worlds so compelling that readers will want to revel in them for pages and chapters and beyond. We’ll learn what kinds of sensory details pack the most powerful punch; how to grab--and hold--the reader with intense descriptions and characters; and how to make stories and people come alive. We’ll use David Lodge’s book "The Art of Fiction" as a tool to probe the elements that combine to create realistic worlds from made-up details. Each of the 52 chapters in this book approaches one aspect of writing--Beginnings, Suspense, Point of View, Character, Sense of Place--that we’ll study, discuss and practice, using freewriting and other in-class exercises created by the instructor. Every week we’ll share our work and learn how to critique fiction productively. The instructor will give focussed attention to your written work and meet with each student individually to discuss it.