Fiction writing classes at the college level are often taught under the assumption that students should be learning to reproduce traditional literary works for print publication. This approach ignores the fact that many undergraduate students do not share this goal and instead take these classes to experiment with their own creative expression. Rather than focusing on print-based literary fiction, this paper argues that students can become more engaged and learn more deeply about narrative concepts and think critically about cultures and characters when they are writing stories in a preexisting world rather than trying to generate their own original settings. The familiarity of preexisting worlds combined with rules of role-playing games to help them feel at ease in the fiction writing classroom, increases engagement, builds a strong writing community. This approach also allows them greater range to explore multimedia compositions and collaborative storytelling techniques.
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