Tochi Onyebuchi

This craft class will be focused on filmic adaptations of existing prose and stage work. Our breakdown of the craft of adaptation will be more lab than academic criticism. To that end, we will be studying specific examples of filmic adaptations over the course of the semester with the expectation that, by semester’s end, students will have drafted their own feature-length adaptation of an existing prose or stage work. Class time will alternate between film screenings and follow-up discussion of the source material. Examples include: No Country for Old Men (No Country for Old Men), Arrival (Story of Your Life), The Social Network (The Accidental Billionaires), William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet (Romeo and Juliet), Moonlight (In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue), 10 Things I Hate About You (The Taming of the Shrew), Carol (The Price of Salt), and Edge of Tomorrow (All You Need Is Kill). Due to the length of some films on the syllabus, class will occasionally run over.

Despite classics such as Orwell’s Animal Farm and The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson, the novella has long proven to be an unwieldy format. Shorter than the novel but more complicated than a short story, Stephen King once called the novella “an ill-defined and disreputable literary banana republic.” Falling between 17,500 and 40,000 words, the market has long proven resistant to these stories. But the novella offers unique opportunities: extensive worldbuilding and deeper, more complex character relations, all while sidestepping the risk of longueur that hangs over the novel. Additionally, the form has played host to no shortage of structural innovations. In this class, students will study the novella as it occurs in science fiction and fantasy, ranging from The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde to contemporary fare like Ken Liu’s The Man Who Ended History: A Documentary. Additionally, students will be encouraged to produce the beginnings of a work of original fiction intended for a length between 17,500 and 40,000 words. Reading List: The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson, The Lifecycle of Software Objects by Ted Chiang, Great Work of Time by John Crowley, Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire, A Taste of Honey by Kai Ashante Wilson, The Ballad of Black Tom by Victor LaValle, The Fifth Head of Cerberus by Gene Wolfe, Binti by Nnedi Okorafor, The Man Who Ended History: A Documentary by Ken Liu, The Black Tides of Heaven by JY Yang