Expos, Extended

While undergraduates at the College and students at the Extension School don’t tend to mingle much, just take a look at both course catalogues, and you’ll find some striking parallels.

With 13 creative writing course listings at the Extension School, the opportunity for student diversity is great. But as for the courses themselves, at least on paper, they look a whole lot like what undergraduates are used to at the College.

The creative writing offerings provided by both institutions are nearly identical, and many members of the creative writing faculty at the Extension School are in fact part of the College’s Expository Writing program.

REQUIRED WRITING

Just as all undergraduates at the College must take Expository Writing, Expos is also a requirement for the Extension School degree program.

“The fiction and expository writing classes are great complements,” said Dr. William Weitzel, an Expository Writing preceptor at the College and the instructor for the Extension School’s Intermediate Fiction Writing course.

Indeed, many of his creative writing colleagues at the Extension School share a similar pedigree—splitting their time between their responsibilities at the Extension School and Expository Writing program at the College.

Like Weitzel, Dr. Ken Urban, a professional playwright and director, is an instructor of playwriting at the Extension School who also teaches Expository Writing to undergraduates.

Before enrolling in Urban’s playwriting class, Chris Hayes, a student at the Extension School, was required to take Expository Writing to fulfill his degree requirements. He explains that although he was one of the few students that enjoyed his Expository Writing class, the course was among his most positive academic experiences thus far.

“Any time you learn a new style of writing, you are exercising your writing muscle, “ Hayes said. “Professor Morrison, my expository writing professor, was fantastic, and although the course itself was stressful, I was able to add to my toolbox and think critically and analytically.”

CREATIVELY WORKING

Like the College’s English Department, the Extension School’s creative writing program covers a wide range of genres—from playwriting and memoir to novels.

For students like Hayes who are seeking to develop their writing, the range of courses provides ample space for exploration.

Hayes, who is specially interested in screenwriting, is currently enrolled in Urban’s playwriting class. After taking a screenwriting class last year, he decided that this would help enhance his writing.

The course is designed for students with little or no experience in writing plays. Assignments consist of drafting small dialogues or monologues, while the class culminates in students writing ten-minute long scripts.

“What’s neat about [this course] is that after we do our assignments, they all get read in class, and then everyone makes comments in a very structured way,” Hayes said. “You really feel the pressure of a real playwright, because if your work stinks it could be really embarrassing. It forces you to think of it in a realistic environment.”

Like Urban, other faculty members at the Extension School bring their own professional, real-life experience to the classroom. Christopher S. Mooney, who teaches a course on suspense fiction, is a published author of suspense novels. Robin Lippincott, who leads a section of Intermediate Fiction Writing, has written three novels and a collection of short stories.

Lippincott believes that to become a good fiction writer, one must think like one. It is this mentality that informs his teaching.

“For the first few weeks of the class, I bring in published stories for the students to read and study,” said Lippincott. “This teaches them to read like a writer and thus helps them to learn elements of fictional technique.”

The Extension School also features a course titled “Writing the Novel,” which is taught by William J. Holinger, a former Expository Writing preceptor and current director of the Harvard Summer School Secondary School Program. Holinger has been teaching this course for over a decade, although this year he revamped it to present the material in a different way—emphasizing point of view, voice, and narration, as well as narrative structure and plot.

Holinger says that he devotes a lot of time in this course to focusing on the students’ own work and discussing the process behind writing a novel.

According to Holinger, “Writing a novel is a huge enterprise. Everyone does it differently, and so we discuss process in just about every class.”

In addition, Holinger also invites a novelist to speak to his students every semester. For the past several years, this visitor has been a former student of the class.

THE STORIES BEHIND THE STUDENTS

One of the defining characteristics of the Extension School courses is the great diversity of the students who take them. Although most of the creative writing courses are capped at fifteen students, participants hail from unique backgrounds, and represent a wide range of ages. One student in Holinger’s class actually flies in every week from Georgia to take his course at the Extension School.

Holinger adds that while the Extension School officially caps its creative writing courses at 15 students, he tends to admit more than that “because life intervenes, and students’ lives change: they move away unexpectedly, they change jobs, they have a baby—whatever.”

When he’s selecting students for his classes, Hollinger explains that he tries to ignore their ages and focus on their novels. This term, his class consists of 17 students—most of whom are in their 20’s and 30’s, although some are in their 50’s and older.

According to Lippincott, the students in his course are equally varied. Represented in his Intermediate Fiction Writing course are Harvard undergraduates, recent college graduates, as well as professionals—including lawyers and journalists.

Weitzel believes that this diversity is what makes his class enjoyable for his students as well as for him.

“I really enjoy teaching fiction in the Extension School,” he said. “A wide range of students enroll who bring with them a great deal of enthusiasm and determination. Their excitement is infectious.”