Would you like to know how to write really awful prose? Boring stories? Flat novels? Poems that make readers yawn? Then you’ve come to the right place! In this class, we’ll find out how to fill our writing with useless fluff, use all abstract generalizations and avoid sensory descriptions, choose well-worn clichés, ignore stylistics, go for the most obvious ideas, introduce unimportant characters, avoid tidy paragraphs, and create a dull narrative. You won’t want to miss out on this superficial study of the mediocre, the mundane, and the soporific!

In each class, we’ll look at an example of writing that follows these rules and is, therefore, rather bad. Then we’ll do exercises in which we improve that aspect of this writing. Participants will be invited to work throughout this month on one piece of their own writing. It could be a short story, novel, poem, nonfiction work, or academic piece. At the end of each class, we’ll brainstorm how to apply that day’s real principle of good writing to our own work.