Intermediate Fiction challenges students to identify, analyze, and imitate diverse narrative strategies. Instructors may choose to concentrate on a theme, a genre, or some other organizing principle. In any case, the focus will shift from basic story elements to a more nuanced discussion of narrative moves, genre conventions, character types and archetypes, modes of representation, and stylistic variations. Instructors may also choose to address cultural difference as a factor in storytelling. Students will learn to evaluate the rhetorical choices of published authors and their own peers. Instructors of Intermediate Fiction assume some familiarity with the workshop method, though students will certainly continue to master this technique as they progress through the emphasis area. This course will likely include a variety of texts from anthologies such as Best American Short Stories, Best American Non- Required Reading, or O Henry Prize Stories, to classic and contemporary novels and short story collections.