Genres in Creative Writing: Stream of Consciousness

In this deep dive into a literary genre, students will explore Stream-of-Consciousness through reading past works, unpacking the principles that define the genre, and practice writing with those principles. Stream-of-consciousness is a literary technique made notorious by the avant garde writers of the early 20th century. Where thoughts run wild, feelings and affects tinge and warp the line, and Oxford commas are more optional than ever–Modernist writers deployed this technique to probe the deep spaces of the psyche, explore the alienation of industrialized subjectivity, and say the unsayable.

 

This workshop will explore how this technique works, then and now, and encourage students to experiment with it in narrative, poetic, and/or visual artistic forms. Students will leave the workshop with a completed written work generated during the class and a better understanding of the principles of stream-of-consciousness and its adjacent writing styles.