@article{Kennedy_2015, place={Washington DC: American Sociological Association.}, title={Facts in Fiction: Using Creative and Analytical Writing for Sociological Learning}, url={https://trails.asanet.org/article/view/facts-in-fiction-using-creative-and-analytical}, abstractNote={Students of sociology often struggle to see how society impacts their individual identities, decisions, relationships. This assignment invites students to explore "the social" by creating a fictional character. I have the students read the novel, American Circumstance, by Patricia Leavy, but instructors could use any novel that incorporates sociological insights. I then ask them to create a new character to weave into the fabric of the story. They must imagine the character’s background, and write a 5 page interaction with at least one of the existing characters. After the creative writing, students must analyze (in 5 more pages) the choices they made with their character, and how their character is influenced by social statuses and inequalities. You can also have the students analyze the choices made by Leavy (or the author of the novel you choose) in additional pages. The benefits of this assignment are clear. First, the fun, unassuming veneer of a novel does not feel like work. Students enjoy the reading, and therefore, it gets completed in a timely and thorough way. Second, students are pushed out of their element in creative writing which creates the opportunity for new ways of thinking. The analytical portion returns them to a writing style to which they are accustomed, and provides an opportunity to explain, using course materials, how their character is affected by social structures. Using different writing styles, students’ different strengths are balanced. The mix of writing styles is also addresses students’ different learning styles. Third, students relate to the characters in the novel, thus humanizing concepts that may appear as abstract in lecture. And, when creating their own characters, students often, though perhaps inadvertently, venture into autobiography, leading to a kind of auto-ethnographic analysis of how social structures influence their own lives.}, journal={TRAILS: Teaching Resources and Innovations Library for Sociology}, author={Kennedy, Amanda}, year={2015}, month={Dec.} }