The Greatest Short Stories Ever Told
Sixteen SessionsA free literary course for the residents of 2601 · taught by James F. Mulhern
What would you like to see?
Click any button below.
Important Information & Course Materials▾
An Invitation▾
The short story is the most concentrated literary art there is. A poem of prose. An hour of reading that, when the story is great, you will think about for the rest of your life. This course is sixteen meetings inside the twelve greatest short stories ever published — from Poe and Maupassant to Hemingway and O. Henry — and four meetings in which each of you writes a short story of your own.
You do not need to have read short fiction before. You do not need to have written before. You only need to be willing to read closely, to listen, and to put pen to paper for ten minutes at a time.
Welcome▾
This is a free, non-graded, discussion-based course meeting once a week in the community room. It asks nothing of you except a willingness to read a short story beforehand and to say what you think once you get here. There are no quizzes, no papers, no grades. Nothing said in this room is repeated outside it.
Over sixteen weeks we move through twelve indispensable stories — in roughly chronological order — and then close with four working sessions in which every member of the salon drafts and revises a short story of their own. Every text we read is in the public domain or available free through a linked public source.
What This Course Is▾
A salon — a small literary gathering for adult readers and writers. Over twelve afternoons we read the canonical short story (Poe to O. Henry) in five units, organized chronologically. Over the final four afternoons we write our own. The same fundamentals — image, voice, scene, structure, the moment of recognition — recur in each reading, then become the tools you use at your own desk.
What This Course Is Not▾
It is not a workshop in the harsh sense. No one is asked to share writing they do not want to share.
It is not a graded course. There are no quizzes, no papers, no required deliverables.
Nothing said in this room leaves this room. Nothing is for sale here. This is a free course for the residents of 2601.
Syllabus▾
| Session | Unit | Focus |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Unit I — The Birth of the Modern Story | The Single Effect — Poe Invents the Form |
| 2 | Unit I — The Birth of the Modern Story | Plot, Irony, and the Turn — Maupassant |
| 3 | Unit I — The Birth of the Modern Story | The Quiet Story and the Hidden Wound — Chekhov |
| 4 | Unit II — The Modernist Turn | Parable and the Modern Self — Kafka |
| 5 | Unit II — The Modernist Turn | The Epiphany — Joyce |
| 6 | Unit II — The Modernist Turn | A Day That Contains a Life — Mansfield |
| 7 | Unit III — The American Story Comes of Age | The Iceberg — Hemingway |
| 8 | Unit III — The American Story Comes of Age | The Grotesque and the Sympathetic Eye — Anderson |
| 9 | Unit III — The American Story Comes of Age | Naturalism and the Indifferent Universe — Crane |
| 10 | Unit IV — The American Voice Continues | Character as Pressure — Cather |
| 11 | Unit IV — The American Voice Continues | The Body and the Cold — Jack London |
| 12 | Unit IV — The American Voice Continues | The Twist and the Heart — O. Henry |
| 13 | Unit V — Writing Your Own Short Story | The Spark — Finding the Premise |
| 14 | Unit V — Writing Your Own Short Story | Scene, Summary, and the Engine of Want |
| 15 | Unit V — Writing Your Own Short Story | Endings — Earning the Turn |
| 16 | Farewell · Session Sixteen | Revision & the Writing Life — A Lifetime of Stories |
What to Bring & What to Read▾
Each week, bring: a notebook and a pen you like writing with; a laptop or tablet (we read together on screen for the first half-hour); whatever you are currently working on, or wish to start; an open ear.
Required text: The Art of the Short Story by Dana Gioia and R.S. Gwynn — any edition. Used copies typically $8–$18.
Recommended (not required): The Lonely Voice (Frank O'Connor); Reading Like a Writer (Francine Prose); Imaginative Writing (Janet Burroway); The Best American Short Stories (current year).
You do not need to buy any book to do the reading for this course — every required text is linked free in the Readings section below.
The Sessions▾
Session One — The Single Effect — Poe Invents the Form
Unit I — The Birth of the Modern Story | Week 1
Main Points of the Lesson
- The modern short story has a birthday. In 1842, reviewing Hawthorne, Poe argued a short story should aim at one preconceived effect — and every sentence should bend toward it.
- Unity. The story is short enough to be read in a single sitting, so the effect must be unbroken. Nothing exists for any other reason.
- Calculation. The writer chooses the effect first, then builds backward. Every detail — the cask, the cap and bells, the trowel — must serve.
- Voice. Montresor narrates fifty years after the fact, with a calm that is more terrifying than rage. Voice carries what plot alone could not.
- A diagnostic for every writer: what is the single effect of this story? Can I name it in one phrase?
Reading
Required reading: Edgar Allan Poe, "The Cask of Amontillado" (1846) — open the reading
Critical Articles
Open these only after you have formed your own response.
- "The Cask of Amontillado" — Wikipedia background and reception
- Poe, "Review of Twice-Told Tales" (1842) — the founding statement of the single-effect doctrine
- LitCharts — close reading of "The Cask of Amontillado"
In-Class Practice — Laptops Closed
Write about a small grievance — real or imagined — that you have carried for a long time. Just one. Set the scene briefly. Write only the moment in which the grievance is delivered — a word, a look, a small unkindness. Do not explain it. Let the moment do its own work.
What happens with this: Ten minutes, by hand, on paper. Not collected. Two or three volunteers may read a single sentence aloud at the end if they wish. The discipline of this first exercise is restraint: students always want to explain. Coach them not to.
Discussion Questions
- Name the single effect of "The Cask of Amontillado" in one phrase. Where do you first feel it?
- What does Poe leave out? Why does the omission make the story more powerful, not less?
- Montresor tells the story fifty years after the fact. What does the gap of fifty years do that an in-the-moment telling could not?
- Find the sentence you cannot forget. What does it owe to the sentences around it?
Homework
- Fill out the First-Day Worksheet (below) and bring it to Session 2. This is the only worksheet collected; it helps me learn names and what each student wants to write.
- Read Guy de Maupassant’s "The Necklace" — link in the Readings tab on the website.
- Optional: take what you wrote in class today and expand it to about one page in your notebook.
Before the next session: Plot, Irony, and the Turn. We move from Poe’s single calculated effect to Maupassant’s perfected mechanism of irony — the story that turns on its last sentence. We will trace exactly where Maupassant plants the device that the ending pulls.
First-Day Worksheet — collected next session
This is the one worksheet the instructor will collect. It helps me learn your name, what brought you, and what you most want to write. Nothing on this sheet will be shared with the room.
- Your preferred name (the name you’d like to be called in this room):
- What brought you here today? (One or two sentences is plenty.)
- What short story has stayed with you longest — and do you know why?
- What have you always wanted to write — even if you never have?
Session Two — Plot, Irony, and the Turn — Maupassant
Unit I — The Birth of the Modern Story | Week 2
Main Points of the Lesson
- Maupassant inherits Poe’s commitment to unity and adds the most enduring engineering of the form: the turn at the end.
- Plot is a sequence of cause-and-effect with a moment of reversal. Plot is what the story does to its reader.
- Dramatic irony is the gap between what a character knows and what the reader knows. "The Necklace" weaponizes that gap.
- The twist works because Maupassant plants the device early — fairly, in plain sight — and then lets the reader forget it.
- A diagnostic for any plotted story: where is the planted detail? Where does the reader forget it? Where does the writer make us remember?
Reading
Required reading: Guy de Maupassant, "The Necklace" (1884) — open the reading
Critical Articles
Open these only after you have formed your own response.
- Maupassant on the writer’s craft — Preface to Pierre et Jean
- "The Necklace" — Wikipedia background and adaptations
- LitCharts — close reading of "The Necklace"
In-Class Practice — Laptops Closed
Write a short paragraph in which a character receives a small object — a key, a letter, a piece of borrowed jewelry — that they assume is worth one thing, and that the reader can already guess is worth another. Do not reveal the gap. Let it sit.
What happens with this: Ten minutes, by hand. The exercise teaches withholding. Watch for students who explain the gap; coach them to cut the explanation.
Discussion Questions
- Where exactly does Maupassant plant the device that the ending pulls? Read the sentence aloud.
- What does Mathilde Loisel want? Is she punished for wanting it, or for something else?
- Is the story a critique of vanity, of class, of fate — or of something else entirely?
- If Maupassant ended the story one sentence earlier, what would change?
Homework
- Read Anton Chekhov’s "Gooseberries" — link in the Readings tab.
- Optional: ten minutes on the Plot & Irony worksheet, applied to a story you have written or read recently.
Before the next session: The Quiet Story and the Hidden Wound. Chekhov dismantles the plot-driven story. We leave Maupassant’s machinery behind and enter the modern interior story.
Plot & Irony Worksheet — for your private notebook
Copy into a Word document. Apply to a story you have written, or to a story you have read recently. This stays in your private notebook — never collected.
- The single effect, in one phrase:
- The device planted early:
- The moment the reader forgets it:
- The moment the writer makes us remember:
- What the character believes at the moment of the reveal:
- What we, as readers, understand that the character does not:
Session Three — The Quiet Story and the Hidden Wound — Chekhov
Unit I — The Birth of the Modern Story | Week 3
Main Points of the Lesson
- Chekhov is the writer to whom every modern short-story writer is indebted.
- The Chekhovian story has no big plot. Nothing dramatic happens. And yet the reader closes the story changed.
- Chekhov’s instrument: the small revealing detail — what he called the "broken bottle on the dam."
- "Gooseberries" carries the hidden wound of the form: the brother who has finally got what he wanted, and the older brother who sees that the wanting itself was a poverty.
- A diagnostic: strip the story of its plot. What survives?
Reading
Required reading: Anton Chekhov, "Gooseberries" (1898) — open the reading
Critical Articles
Open these only after you have formed your own response.
- Janet Malcolm, "Reading Chekhov" — The New York Review (excerpt)
- Francine Prose, Reading Like a Writer — chapter on Chekhov’s details
- Chekhov, Letters — the "broken bottle" passage and other craft remarks
In-Class Practice — Laptops Closed
Write a single page in which a person tells a story to another person — and the listener is the one being changed by it. Do not let the teller know they are doing it. Let the room (and the reader) feel the listener’s slow turn.
What happens with this: Ten minutes, by hand. The work of this session is to feel the second character’s interior shift. Students will reach instinctively for big drama; coach them to keep the gestures small.
Discussion Questions
- Whose story is "Gooseberries" — Nikolai’s, Ivan Ivanovich’s, or someone else’s?
- The story-within-a-story is a frame device. What does the frame do that a single direct telling could not?
- What is the wound at the center of the story? Where is it first visible?
- Chekhov is famous for not moralizing — yet the story carries a moral weight. Where does it come from?
- Find one small revealing detail — what Chekhov called "the broken bottle." Why that detail?
Homework
- Read Franz Kafka’s "A Hunger Artist" — link in the Readings tab.
- Optional: strip a paragraph of your own writing of its plot. What survives?
Before the next session: Parable and the Modern Self. We leave the nineteenth century and enter the modernist interior. Kafka turns the old form of the parable into the language of modern alienation.
The Chekhov Diagnostic — for your private notebook
Copy into a Word document. Apply to "Gooseberries" first, then to any story you have written. This stays in your private notebook.
- Strip the story of its plot. What survives?
- The one small revealing detail (Chekhov’s "broken bottle"):
- The hidden wound — the thing that is hurt that no character names:
- The character being slowly changed by what they are hearing or seeing:
- The sentence that does the work the plot is not doing:
Session Four — Parable and the Modern Self — Kafka
Unit II — The Modernist Turn | Week 4
Main Points of the Lesson
- Kafka inherits Chekhov’s interiority and runs it through an older form: the parable.
- A parable is a short story with a hidden meaning. The meaning is not stated. The reader must do the work.
- Kafka modernizes the form by refusing the conventional moral. "A Hunger Artist" looks like a fable but resists every lesson the reader tries to extract.
- Allegory is not what Kafka does. Allegory makes the reader feel clever. Parable makes the reader feel something is at stake the reader cannot name.
- The famous last words come closest to telling us what the story is about. They do not solve it.
Reading
Required reading: Franz Kafka, "A Hunger Artist" (1922) — open the reading
Critical Articles
Open these only after you have formed your own response.
- Walter Benjamin, "Franz Kafka" (1934) — the classic essay on Kafka’s parables
- The Modernism Lab (Yale) — Kafka and the modern parable
- "A Hunger Artist" — Wikipedia background and analysis
In-Class Practice — Laptops Closed
Write a single paragraph in which a character does something extreme — fasts, walks all night, refuses to leave a room — for a reason they cannot or will not explain. Let the reader infer. Do not let the character confess.
What happens with this: Ten minutes, by hand. Watch for the student who has the character think the reason at the end. Coach them to cut it.
Discussion Questions
- What is the hunger artist hungry for? Defend your answer with one detail from the text.
- Why does Kafka set the story in a circus — a place of spectacle?
- The story is told in distant, faintly amused third person. What does that distance do to a story of suffering?
- The story’s last sentence introduces a panther. Why? What does the panther make us understand that the hunger artist could not?
Homework
- Read James Joyce’s "Araby" — link in the Readings tab.
- Optional: rewrite a paragraph of your own as a parable, without naming the moral.
Before the next session: The Epiphany. Joyce gives the modern short story its central instrument — the small flash of recognition in which the world quietly tilts.
The Parable Worksheet — for your private notebook
Copy into a Word document. Apply to a short piece of your own writing.
- The unnamed thing the character wants:
- What the character names instead:
- The detail the reader must do the work of:
- The line the writer refuses to say:
- The closing image that lets the reader feel what was unsaid:
Session Five — The Epiphany — Joyce
Unit II — The Modernist Turn | Week 5
Main Points of the Lesson
- Joyce gives modern fiction its most enduring narrative gift: the epiphany — a small flash of recognition in which an ordinary moment becomes unbearably clear.
- The word is Joyce’s deliberate borrowing from Catholic liturgy. The epiphany of the church is the showing forth of the divine; the epiphany of the story is the showing forth of the truth.
- An epiphany is not an event. It is a shift in seeing. The world is the same after; only the character is different.
- The epiphany is almost always quiet. The protagonist may not even register it.
- A diagnostic: where is the epiphany? Whose is it — the character’s, the narrator’s, or the reader’s?
Reading
Required reading: James Joyce, "Araby" from Dubliners (1914) — open the reading
Critical Articles
Open these only after you have formed your own response.
- "Araby" — Wikipedia background and the broader Dubliners architecture
- LitCharts — close reading of "Araby"
- Joyce’s notion of "epiphany" — from Stephen Hero (1944, posthumous)
In-Class Practice — Laptops Closed
Write a single page describing a small disappointment — a moment from your own life or invented — that you suspect was secretly larger than it looked. Do not name what was disappointed. Let the reader feel the size of the loss in the closing image.
What happens with this: Ten minutes, by hand. The point of the exercise is the closing image, not the explanation. Coach students to delete any sentence that begins "I realized."
Discussion Questions
- Find the exact sentence in "Araby" where the epiphany lands. Read it aloud. What changes for the boy?
- Joyce’s epiphanies often involve seeing through one’s own romanticism. Where does that pattern show in "Araby"?
- The narrator is the older self, looking back. What does that doubled perspective allow Joyce to do?
- In a piece you are drafting, where is the epiphany — and if there isn’t one, where might one go?
Homework
- Read Katherine Mansfield’s "The Garden Party" — link in the Readings tab. Give yourself an hour. Read it twice.
- Optional: mark the epiphany (if any) in a draft of your own.
Before the next session: A Day That Contains a Life. Mansfield brings Chekhov’s lessons into English and gives us a single day that contains the whole of Laura Sheridan’s emerging adult consciousness.
The Epiphany Worksheet — for your private notebook
Copy into a Word document. Try the exercise on any draft.
- The sentence in which the epiphany lands:
- What the character believed before:
- What the character now sees:
- Whose epiphany is it (character / narrator / reader)?
- Is the epiphany announced, or only available to a careful reader?
Session Six — A Day That Contains a Life — Mansfield
Unit II — The Modernist Turn | Week 6
Main Points of the Lesson
- Mansfield brings Chekhov’s lessons into English. She is the bridge from the Russians to the moderns.
- Compression of time. A Mansfield story usually takes place across one day. The reader feels a whole life pass.
- Free indirect style. The narrator slips inside one character, then another, without ever announcing the move.
- The closing line refuses to complete itself. The unfinished sentence is the point.
- A diagnostic: can a short story contain a whole life if its action lasts an afternoon? Mansfield shows us yes.
Reading
Required reading: Katherine Mansfield, "The Garden Party" (1922) — open the reading
Critical Articles
Open these only after you have formed your own response.
- "The Garden Party" — Wikipedia background
- Katherine Mansfield Society — biography and resources
- LitCharts — close reading of "The Garden Party"
In-Class Practice — Laptops Closed
Take a single day from your own life — recent or remembered — and write the opening paragraph as if it were the opening of a Mansfield story. Slip from one character’s perception to another. Let the reader feel the room as more than one person sees it.
What happens with this: Ten minutes, by hand. The discipline is the slip itself. Watch for students who use "thought" or "felt"; coach them to delete the tag.
Discussion Questions
- Find a paragraph where the narrator slips inside one character and then another. Can you hear it happen?
- Laura Sheridan is sixteen. Where does Mansfield first let her feel the weight of her own privilege?
- What does the death of the carter do for the story? What would the garden party be without it?
- The story ends with an unfinished sentence. What does the silence do that any finishing word would not?
Homework
- Read Ernest Hemingway’s "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place" — link in the Readings tab. Read it twice.
- Optional: rewrite a paragraph of your own using free indirect style — slip into the character’s interior without using a tag.
Before the next session: The Iceberg. Hemingway names the principle every contemporary writer has been working with since: seven-eighths of the meaning lives below the surface.
The Mansfield Worksheet — for your private notebook
Copy into a Word document. Apply to a paragraph of your own writing.
- The hour or day the story takes place in:
- The first character whose perception we enter:
- The moment the narrator slips into a second character:
- The detail outside the room that re-centers everything:
- The unfinished sentence — the thing your story declines to say:
Session Seven — The Iceberg — Hemingway
Unit III — The American Story Comes of Age | Week 7
Main Points of the Lesson
- Hemingway named the principle every writer of contemporary fiction has been working with since: the iceberg theory. Seven-eighths of the meaning lives below the surface.
- The discipline is not omission for its own sake. It is knowing what you have left out.
- Hemingway’s prose minimum: short sentences, plain words, almost no adverbs, almost no abstractions.
- "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place" is fewer than 2,000 words. Almost nothing is said about what they fear. The story is what they fear.
- The older waiter’s "nada" prayer is one of the great pieces of withheld grief in modern American fiction.
Reading
Required reading: Ernest Hemingway, "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place" (1933) — open the reading
Critical Articles
Open these only after you have formed your own response.
- Hemingway, Death in the Afternoon (1932) — the original "iceberg" passage
- "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place" — Wikipedia background and textual history
- LitCharts — close reading of "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place"
In-Class Practice — Laptops Closed
Write a short scene — half a page — between two people in a public place at a late hour. Use only dialogue and the smallest possible amount of action tag. Decide before you write what each character is afraid of. Do not name the fear.
What happens with this: Ten minutes, by hand. The discipline is to know the fear and to refuse to write it. Watch for students who let a character say the fear; the exercise has then failed.
Discussion Questions
- Of the three figures — the old man, the younger waiter, the older waiter — whose story is it? Where do we know?
- The older waiter’s "nada" passage is one of the most-quoted in American fiction. Read it aloud. What does it do that direct statement could not?
- What does Hemingway leave out about each of the three figures? How does the omission give them shape?
- Hemingway’s sentences are famously short. Find one that is longer than the others. What is it doing?
- The light of the café — clean, well-lighted — is the title’s promise. Is the story about light, or about its opposite?
Homework
- Read Sherwood Anderson’s "Hands," the opening story of Winesburg, Ohio — link in the Readings tab.
- Optional: rewrite a paragraph of your own with the discipline of iceberg prose.
Before the next session: The Grotesque and the Sympathetic Eye. Sherwood Anderson was Hemingway’s teacher. He was also Faulkner’s, Wolfe’s, and Carver’s.
The Iceberg Worksheet — for your private notebook
Copy into a Word document. Apply to a paragraph or short scene of your own.
- The seven-eighths under the water (what I, the writer, know about the scene):
- The one-eighth above (what the reader actually sees):
- Three adverbs I can cut:
- One abstraction I can replace with a concrete image:
- The thing the dialogue dances around but does not name:
Session Eight — The Grotesque and the Sympathetic Eye — Anderson
Unit III — The American Story Comes of Age | Week 8
Main Points of the Lesson
- Sherwood Anderson taught Hemingway, Faulkner, Wolfe, and the American line that runs to Raymond Carver.
- A grotesque, in Anderson’s sense, is a person who has taken one truth too far and turned it into the whole truth of their life.
- The story does not mock the grotesque. It looks with the sympathetic eye — the look of someone who has decided not to condescend.
- "Hands" is the opening story of Winesburg, Ohio. Wing Biddlebaum’s hands once carried something the village punished him for.
- A diagnostic: have I let this character keep their dignity? Have I given them their one truth, and then refused to laugh at it?
Reading
Required reading: Sherwood Anderson, "Hands" from Winesburg, Ohio (1919) — open the reading
Critical Articles
Open these only after you have formed your own response.
- "Hands" — Wikipedia background
- Winesburg, Ohio — Wikipedia background on the whole book and Anderson’s influence
- Anderson, "Book of the Grotesque" — opening of Winesburg, Ohio (Project Gutenberg)
In-Class Practice — Laptops Closed
Write a short portrait — half a page — of a person you have known who carried one truth too far. Let the reader see what the truth cost them. Refuse to laugh.
What happens with this: Ten minutes, by hand. The work of this session is the discipline of compassion. Watch for irony or distance; coach students toward the sympathetic eye.
Discussion Questions
- What is Wing Biddlebaum’s "one truth"? Where in the story do we see it most clearly?
- The story turns on a moment that happened years before its present time. What does Anderson gain by withholding that backstory until the end?
- Where does the narrator’s voice come closest to the character’s interior? Where does it stand most distant?
- Why does Anderson tell us, in his own voice as narrator, that the story is going to require "a poet"?
- Compare the closing image of "Hands" to the closing image of any Hemingway story.
Homework
- Read Stephen Crane’s "The Open Boat" — link in the Readings tab. Give yourself an hour. Worth every minute.
- Optional: apply the Sympathetic Eye worksheet to a portrait of your own.
Before the next session: Naturalism and the Indifferent Universe. We close the canonical line with one of the most famous American sentences in the form: None of them knew the color of the sky.
The Sympathetic Eye Worksheet — for your private notebook
Copy into a Word document. Apply to a character of your own.
- The one truth this character has taken too far:
- What the truth has cost them:
- The detail that lets the reader feel the cost without being told it:
- One sentence in which I, as the writer, refused to laugh:
- The dignity the character keeps even at their lowest:
Session Nine — Naturalism and the Indifferent Universe — Crane
Unit III — The American Story Comes of Age | Week 9
Main Points of the Lesson
- Stephen Crane gives the American short story one of its founding sentences: None of them knew the color of the sky.
- Naturalism is the literary descendant of Darwin and the deterministic sciences. The universe is indifferent to human suffering.
- "The Open Boat" is based on Crane’s own experience: thirty hours in a dinghy after the steamship Commodore sank off Florida in 1897.
- Crane is doing what Hemingway will quietly inherit: men under extreme physical strain in clear, unsentimental prose.
- The recurring "If I am going to be drowned…" gives the modern short story its model for how to think about fate without invoking God.
Reading
Required reading: Stephen Crane, "The Open Boat" (1897) — open the reading
Critical Articles
Open these only after you have formed your own response.
- "The Open Boat" — Wikipedia background
- Crane, "Stephen Crane’s Own Story" — the contemporary newspaper account of the wreck
- LitCharts — close reading of "The Open Boat"
In-Class Practice — Laptops Closed
Write a short passage — half a page — in which a character is in extreme physical circumstance (cold, exhaustion, hunger, the long late hour of a sleepless night) and the writing refuses to dramatize. Plain words. Short sentences. The body’s facts as the body would report them.
What happens with this: Ten minutes, by hand. The discipline is the refusal of drama. Watch for adverbs and exclamations; coach students to cut them.
Discussion Questions
- The opening sentence — "None of them knew the color of the sky" — is one of the most-cited in American fiction. Why?
- The story has four men and a narrator. Whose story is it?
- What does Crane gain by letting the "If I am going to be drowned…" sentence return?
- The story ends with the men understanding what the sea had been saying to them. How does Crane earn that?
- What in Crane do you hear in Hemingway? Be specific.
Homework
- Read Willa Cather’s "Paul’s Case" — link in the Readings tab.
Before the next session: Character as Pressure. Cather gives us a young man whose one fierce desire is pursued so steadily that the story becomes his temperature.
The Naturalism Worksheet — for your private notebook
Copy into a Word document. Apply to a passage of your own.
- The body’s facts as the body would report them:
- What I, as the writer, refused to dramatize:
- The repeating sentence — the one that comes back:
- The closing image that lets the reader understand without being told:
Session Ten — Character as Pressure — Cather
Unit IV — The American Voice Continues | Week 10
Main Points of the Lesson
- Willa Cather wrote "Paul’s Case" in 1905 — a story she said came closer than any other to the kind of literature she most wanted to make.
- A character is not a description of a person; a character is a want with a body around it.
- Paul’s want is unspoken, almost unspeakable, and it pressurizes every page. He is not a boy who likes the theatre. He is a boy who cannot live without it.
- Cather’s prose is patient. She lets a single desire intensify until the desire becomes the story’s whole temperature.
- A diagnostic: what does my character want so badly that they cannot, in this story, do anything else?
Reading
Required reading: Willa Cather, "Paul’s Case" (1905) — open the reading
Critical Articles
Open these only after you have formed your own response.
- "Paul’s Case" — Wikipedia background
- Willa Cather Archive (University of Nebraska–Lincoln) — author resources and texts
- LitCharts — close reading of "Paul’s Case"
In-Class Practice — Laptops Closed
Write a single page in which a character pursues a small luxury — a meal, a fabric, a hotel room, a piece of music — with an intensity that the reader should recognize as a hunger for something else entirely. Do not name the something else.
What happens with this: Ten minutes, by hand. The discipline is to write the surface luxury so precisely that the deeper hunger comes through. Watch for any sentence that names the hunger directly; coach students to cut it.
Discussion Questions
- What does Paul actually want? Defend your answer with one detail from the text.
- Cather chose to write about Paul instead of inside Paul. What does the small distance give her that close third-person would not?
- Where does the story first signal that Paul will not be able to live with what he has chosen?
- Compare Paul to Mathilde Loisel (Session 2). Both are punished for wanting. Are they the same story?
- Cather’s prose is famously patient. Find a paragraph that takes its time. What does the slowness do?
Homework
- Read Jack London’s "To Build a Fire" — link in the Readings tab.
Before the next session: The Body and the Cold. London writes a story in which there is almost no interior life — just a man, a dog, and seventy-five degrees below zero.
The Cather Worksheet — for your private notebook
Copy into a Word document.
- The one fierce desire my character cannot live without:
- The small luxury that reveals the larger hunger:
- The distance the narrator keeps from the character:
- The first sentence that warns the reader where this is going:
Session Eleven — The Body and the Cold — Jack London
Unit IV — The American Voice Continues | Week 11
Main Points of the Lesson
- "To Build a Fire" is one of the most teachable demonstrations of external stakes in the form. The story is the man’s body losing its ability to do simple things in extreme cold.
- London writes almost no interior life. He gives us a man and a dog.
- The story carries its naturalist inheritance from Crane (Session 9) into the next generation. The universe is indifferent — and the cold is its agent.
- The dog is the story’s quiet moral pressure. The dog knows what the man does not. The reader reads the man through the dog.
- A diagnostic: can I write a story in which the action is small, the body is everything, and the meaning is what the body cannot do?
Reading
Required reading: Jack London, "To Build a Fire" (1908) — open the reading
Critical Articles
Open these only after you have formed your own response.
- "To Build a Fire" — Wikipedia background and the 1902 vs 1908 versions
- Jack London Online Collection (Sonoma State University)
- LitCharts — close reading of "To Build a Fire"
In-Class Practice — Laptops Closed
Write a short passage in which a character tries to do a small physical thing — light a match, button a coat, untie a knot — and cannot. Stay in the body. No interior life. No explanation. Let the inability do the work.
What happens with this: Ten minutes, by hand. The most physical exercise of the course. Watch for any sentence that interprets; coach students toward reportage.
Discussion Questions
- The man has no name. Why?
- Where does London first warn the reader that the man will not survive? Read the sentence aloud.
- The dog is the story’s witness. What does London ask the dog to do that he cannot ask the man to do?
- Compare the moment of failure in London to the closing moment of Crane’s "The Open Boat." Both stories end with the body. Are the endings the same?
- What does the story refuse to dramatize? What does it gain by the refusal?
Homework
- Read O. Henry’s "The Gift of the Magi" — link in the Readings tab.
Before the next session: The Twist and the Heart. O. Henry inherits Maupassant’s turn (Session 2) and brings it across the Atlantic.
The London Worksheet — for your private notebook
Copy into a Word document.
- The small physical action my character tries and fails to do:
- What the body would report:
- The witness in the room (an animal, a child, a stranger) who knows more than the character:
- The sentence in which the cold (or its equivalent) becomes the story’s true subject:
Session Twelve — The Twist and the Heart — O. Henry
Unit IV — The American Voice Continues | Week 12
Main Points of the Lesson
- O. Henry is Maupassant’s most direct American inheritor. The plot mechanism is the same: plant the device, distract the reader, pull the rug at the end.
- But O. Henry warms the form. The twist of "The Gift of the Magi" is not a punishment, like Maupassant’s. It is a benediction.
- The story is built on a small symmetry — two gifts, two sacrifices, one inversion. The symmetry is the story.
- The closing paragraph steps outside the story to address the reader directly. Most contemporary writers would cut it. Why does it work here?
- A diagnostic for any plotted short story: what is the symmetry I am building? And when do I want the reader to see it?
Reading
Required reading: O. Henry, "The Gift of the Magi" (1905) — open the reading
Critical Articles
Open these only after you have formed your own response.
- "The Gift of the Magi" — Wikipedia background and adaptations
- O. Henry — Wikipedia author biography
- LitCharts — close reading of "The Gift of the Magi"
In-Class Practice — Laptops Closed
Write a short scene in which two people give each other gifts — and there is a small ironic symmetry the reader can see and the characters cannot. Do not name the symmetry.
What happens with this: Ten minutes, by hand. The discipline is the geometry of the gesture. Watch for students who explain the symmetry; coach them to trust the reader.
Discussion Questions
- Compare O. Henry’s twist to Maupassant’s twist in "The Necklace" (Session 2). What is the same? What is different in tone, and in what the story is finally saying?
- The closing paragraph speaks directly to the reader. A modern editor would cut it. Should it stay? Why or why not?
- Are Della and Jim flat characters? If so, does that hurt the story or help it?
- What is the difference between a sentimental story and a tender one? Where does "The Gift of the Magi" sit?
Homework
- Bring to next week one premise — a single sentence — for a short story you would like to write during the next four sessions. Just one sentence: "It is the story of a person who…"
Before the next session: The Spark — Finding the Premise. The first of four working sessions in which each of you writes a short story of your own.
The O. Henry Worksheet — for your private notebook
Copy into a Word document.
- The symmetry between the two characters:
- The detail each gives up:
- The moment the reader sees the symmetry the characters cannot:
- The closing sentence I would write if I were finishing the story for myself:
Session Thirteen — The Spark — Finding the Premise
Unit V — Writing Your Own Short Story | Week 13
Main Points of the Lesson
- A short story almost always begins with a premise sentence — a single line that tells you who, what, and what is at stake. "It is the story of a person who…"
- The premise is not the plot. It is the seed of the plot.
- Three reliable kinds of premise: the secret (a character holds something they cannot say), the choice (a character must do one thing or another), and the encounter (a character meets a stranger and is changed).
- The premise is testable: if I can name what is at stake in one phrase, I have a premise. If I cannot, I have a situation.
- The first 500 words exist to find the voice. The voice is everything.
Reading
Required reading: Janet Burroway, Imaginative Writing — chapter on Image and Voice (in-class excerpt)
Critical Articles
Open these only after you have formed your own response.
- Janet Burroway, Imaginative Writing — chapter on Image and Voice
- George Saunders, "What Writers Really Do When They Write" — The Guardian (2017)
- Charles Baxter, Burning Down the House — on the premise-shaped story
In-Class Practice — Laptops Closed
Bring your one-sentence premise. We spend the second half of class writing the opening of the story — 500 words, by hand, in your notebook. Three opening moves that almost always work: open inside a small concrete action; open with one specific sensory detail; open with a sentence that the rest of the story will have to earn.
What happens with this: Forty-five minutes. The longest in-class writing block in the course. Walk the room quietly while students write. Do not interrupt. At the end, ask two or three volunteers to read just the first sentence aloud; listen for the voice.
Discussion Questions
- What is the difference between a premise and a situation? Where does each story we read this term sit on that line?
- Read your premise sentence aloud (only if you would like to). Can the room name what is at stake?
- Which kind of premise are you working with: the secret, the choice, or the encounter?
- What was the hardest thing about the first 500 words? Where did the voice arrive?
Homework
- Write a complete first draft — about 1,500 to 3,000 words — between Session 13 and Session 14. Bring the draft, on paper if possible, to Session 14.
- The first draft is for you. It will not be good. That is the point. The middle draft is where the story actually arrives.
Before the next session: Scene, Summary, and the Engine of Want. We bring the first draft to the room and look at what scene is doing, what summary is doing, and where the engine of want is — or isn’t — running.
The Premise Worksheet — for your private notebook
Copy into a Word document.
- Premise sentence ("It is the story of a person who…"):
- What does the character want?
- What stands in the way?
- What is at stake — what will they lose if they fail?
- Is this a story of a secret, a choice, or an encounter?
- The first sentence of my opening:
Session Fourteen — Scene, Summary, and the Engine of Want
Unit V — Writing Your Own Short Story | Week 14
Main Points of the Lesson
- Scene puts the reader in the room. Time slows; dialogue is heard. Summary covers ground. Time accelerates; events are reported rather than dramatized.
- Mature short stories alternate scene and summary deliberately. The alternation is the pacing of the story.
- The engine of want is the line of desire that runs through the story. If the engine stalls, the story drifts.
- The most common first-draft problem is that the engine is stated rather than dramatized.
- A diagnostic for your own draft: mark every paragraph S or M. Then circle every sentence where the character’s want is visible through behavior, not declaration.
Reading
Required reading: Janet Burroway, Imaginative Writing — chapter on Story Form, Plot, and Structure (in-class)
Critical Articles
Open these only after you have formed your own response.
- Janet Burroway, Imaginative Writing — chapter on Story Form, Plot, and Structure
- Robert McKee, Story — on scene and sequence
- Francine Prose, Reading Like a Writer — chapter on Paragraph (on the unit of attention)
In-Class Practice — Laptops Closed
Open your draft. Mark every paragraph S (scene) or M (summary). Then look at the ratio. If everything is scene, you have not yet decided what to leave out. If everything is summary, you have not yet decided where to slow down. Now circle every sentence in which the character’s want is visible — through what they do, not what they say.
What happens with this: Twenty minutes for the marking, twenty minutes for the discussion that follows. The marked draft is the student’s, not the class’s. Let volunteers describe what the ratio revealed without sharing the text itself.
Discussion Questions
- What was the ratio in your draft — scene-heavy or summary-heavy? What does that ratio tell you?
- Where is the engine of want running most clearly? Where does it stall?
- Find one moment you summarized that should be a scene. Then one you scened that should be summarized.
- What is the smallest gesture in your story that already carries the want without naming it?
Homework
- Revise the draft between Session 14 and Session 15. Push toward a clear ending. Aim for a working second draft.
- Do not polish sentences yet. We are still at the level of structure.
Before the next session: Endings — Earning the Turn. We look at how stories end — and at the difference between a twist, a turn, and a recognition.
The Scene/Summary & Want Worksheet — for your private notebook
Copy into a Word document.
- Total scene paragraphs in my draft: Total summary paragraphs:
- One paragraph I summarized that should be a scene:
- One paragraph I scened that should be summarized:
- The behavior (not the declaration) that shows my character’s want:
- The place where the engine of want stalls:
Session Fifteen — Endings — Earning the Turn
Unit V — Writing Your Own Short Story | Week 15
Main Points of the Lesson
- Three kinds of ending: the twist (Maupassant, O. Henry — the planted device is pulled); the turn (Chekhov, Joyce — the world is the same but the character now sees); and the recognition (Mansfield, Anderson — the character cannot quite say what they understand).
- An ending is earned when the materials of the ending have been present from the first page. An ending is imposed when the writer brings something in from outside the story to close it.
- The most common bad ending: the character explains the meaning to the reader. The most common good ending: the closing image does the work the character cannot.
- The last sentence is the second-most-important sentence in a short story. The first is the first sentence.
- A diagnostic: can I cut my final paragraph and have a stronger ending? Usually yes.
Reading
Required reading: No assigned reading. Students bring their second draft.
Critical Articles
Open these only after you have formed your own response.
- James Wood, How Fiction Works — chapter on endings
- Frank O’Connor, The Lonely Voice — on the closing image
- George Saunders, A Swim in a Pond in the Rain — on how stories end
In-Class Practice — Laptops Closed
Write three possible last paragraphs for your story. The first should be the ending you have. The second should cut your current final paragraph and end one paragraph earlier. The third should end on an image rather than a statement. Read all three aloud — quietly, to yourself. The ear knows.
What happens with this: Twenty minutes of writing, twenty minutes of discussion. The exercise almost always reveals that ending number two — the one paragraph earlier — is stronger than the current ending. Volunteers may share one closing line.
Discussion Questions
- Is your ending a twist, a turn, or a recognition? Defend your answer.
- What in the first page already prepared the ending? If you cannot find anything, the ending is imposed, not earned.
- What does your closing image let the reader feel that no sentence of explanation could?
- If you cut the last paragraph, what is lost? What is gained?
Homework
- Revise the draft once more — at the level of sentences, now — between Session 15 and Session 16. Cut by 25%. Then cut by another 10%.
- Bring the final revision to Session 16, and choose one sentence from anywhere in the story to read aloud in the closing exercise.
Before the next session: Revision & the Writing Life — A Lifetime of Stories. We close the salon with the discipline of revision, the reading life that sustains a writing life, and one sentence from each of us, around the circle.
The Endings Worksheet — for your private notebook
Copy into a Word document.
- Is my ending a twist, a turn, or a recognition?
- What in the opening prepared the ending?
- The closing image of my story:
- What I cut, and what survived the cut:
- The sentence I will read aloud at the Farewell:
Session Sixteen — Revision & the Writing Life — A Lifetime of Stories
Farewell · Session Sixteen | Week 16
Main Points of the Lesson
- Revision is not editing. Editing fixes sentences. Revision re-sees the whole.
- The early draft is for the writer. The middle draft is where the writer learns what the piece actually is. The late draft is for the reader.
- A four-pass sequence: read for boredom/confusion/interest → structure → scene-by-scene → sentences.
- Most writers reverse the order — start with sentences, never reach structure. The result is a polished surface over an unstable foundation.
- The short story is a discipline of attention. What we now want to read: Borges, Welty, O’Connor, Munro, Carver, Lispector, Saunders, Trevor, Lahiri. What we now want to write: one good page. Then another.
Reading
Required reading: Frank O’Connor, opening of The Lonely Voice; Eudora Welty, "On Writing" — excerpts provided in class
Critical Articles
Open these only after you have formed your own response.
- Frank O’Connor, The Lonely Voice — the most-cited modern essay on the short story
- Eudora Welty, "On Writing" — collected in The Eye of the Story
- George Saunders, A Swim in a Pond in the Rain — on revision and the writing life
In-Class Practice — Laptops Closed
Each person reads aloud one sentence from anything they wrote during the sixteen meetings. Just one sentence. Around the circle. Applause is fine. Bring tissues.
What happens with this: The closing ritual. Allow extra time. The instructor reads last and ends the salon with a quotation from the course — a line that says what the sixteen weeks were finally about.
Discussion Questions
- Read the closing exercise as the discussion. No formal questions. The sentences are the answer.
Homework
- Read, for the rest of your life. Begin with Borges, Welty, O’Connor, Munro, Carver, Lispector, Saunders, Trevor, Lahiri.
- Write, for the rest of your life. One good page. Then another.
Before the next session:
The Revision Worksheet — for your private notebook
Copy into a Word document. This is the worksheet for the rest of your writing life.
- Pass 1 — Read whole, aloud if possible. Where did I get bored? Confused? Interested?
- Pass 2 — Structure. Are the parts in the right order? What is missing? What is redundant?
- Pass 3 — Scene by scene. What can be cut? What needs more?
- Pass 4 — Sentences. Three sentences I can shorten:
- The Cut. Cut by 25%, then another 10%. What survived?
All the Readings▾
All texts below are in the public domain or freely available online. Links lead to free, legal editions.
Unit I — The Birth of the Modern Story
- Edgar Allan Poe, "The Cask of Amontillado" (1846) — open the reading
- Guy de Maupassant, "The Necklace" (1884) — open the reading
- Anton Chekhov, "Gooseberries" (1898) — open the reading
Unit II — The Modernist Turn
- Franz Kafka, "A Hunger Artist" (1922) — open the reading
- James Joyce, "Araby" from Dubliners (1914) — open the reading
- Katherine Mansfield, "The Garden Party" (1922) — open the reading
Unit III — The American Story Comes of Age
- Ernest Hemingway, "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place" (1933) — open the reading
- Sherwood Anderson, "Hands" from Winesburg, Ohio (1919) — open the reading
- Stephen Crane, "The Open Boat" (1897) — open the reading
Unit IV — The American Voice Continues
- Willa Cather, "Paul’s Case" (1905) — open the reading
- Jack London, "To Build a Fire" (1908) — open the reading
- O. Henry, "The Gift of the Magi" (1905) — open the reading
Unit V — Writing Your Own Short Story
- Janet Burroway, Imaginative Writing — chapter on Image and Voice (in-class excerpt) (provided in class)
- Janet Burroway, Imaginative Writing — chapter on Story Form, Plot, and Structure (in-class) (provided in class)
- No assigned reading. Students bring their second draft. (provided in class)
Farewell · Session Sixteen
- Frank O’Connor, opening of The Lonely Voice; Eudora Welty, "On Writing" — excerpts provided in class (provided in class)
Required & Recommended Books
- Required: The Art of the Short Story by Dana Gioia & R.S. Gwynn (any edition; used copies $8–$18)
- The Lonely Voice — Frank O'Connor
- Reading Like a Writer — Francine Prose
- Imaginative Writing — Janet Burroway
- The Best American Short Stories (current year)