A Writer's Craft Community discussion

To start this discussion, I'd like to hear about your experiences teaching four genres in an introductory creative writing class (or 2 or 3 if you haven't taught 4 yet). You might want to check out my discussions of "Why Teach 4 Genres" and "Cross-Genre Teaching" on the companion website first.

My hope in setting this group up is to start a community where you can ask questions and share your misgivings or challenges you have faced in teaching introductory Creative Writing. I want it to be a place for exchanging ideas and giving each other support.

As I begin another semester teaching a 4-genre creative writing class, my biggest question for myself is why did I ever do it any other way? I know the answer is that nonfiction and drama were less familiar genres for me. And of course, the textbook I used initially only included 3. What I enjoy most about teaching 4 genres is talking about them together in the opening chapters of the book and opening days of the class. In my class, we are now heading into the chapter on character. As a poet, I love bringing up how poets use different terms but think about the same issues and how essayist or memoirists do, too. This helps us look at issues of character in fiction or drama from different angles as well, and it highlights how there isn't one right answer, but that all writers make choices.