Professional Writing and Editing: Write Fiction Material and Write Narratives

Content

As the core unit Write fiction material and the elective unit Write narratives are complementary, we are co-delivering them. This has the further benefit of reducing the assessment burden on students. These units prepare you for more specialised forms of fiction and narrative writing. We explore those elements common to a range of different forms of fiction, such as short story, novel and screenplay. The specific tropes of some genre fiction, such as fantasy and crime, are also considered. Fundamental tools for every fiction writer are covered, including point of view, subject and theme, characterisation, dialogue, setting and atmosphere. Different narrative structures and blueprints, such as the Hero’s Journey,are also explored. This unit considers fiction writing from the sentence level to the story shape and takes in writing style, audience and purpose.

Assessment

Four assessment tasks:

•Opening of a long-form fictional narrative(1000 words)

•Extract of a long-form fictional narrative(1000 words)

•Entire long-form fictional narrative(4000 words)

•A short-form fictional narrative(2000 words).

While this seems a lot of writing, you will have the opportunity to submit ongoing drafts of the major piece of fiction for feedback and be able to use work completed for other units, in particular CUARES403 Research history and theory to inform own arts practice and the ideas generated in CUAPP405 Develop and discuss ideas for own work. This is in recognition both of standard industry practice and the challenges of the major assessment piece.