55064 Honours Writing Workshop

Handbook description

This is an advanced subject for students in the Bachelor of Arts (Honours) in Communication. The subject is intended to deepen both technical and aesthetic understanding of the student's own creative practice and to open up a place for inquiry and informed reflection into the contemporary contexts of writing. Students are asked to engage with various items in a group of specially chosen works selected from a repertoire of innovative approaches in fiction, poetry, script, online writing, critical writing and multimedia. Students must produce their own creative work as a major part of the workshop's activities. They receive and provide productive feedback on work-in-progress, and explore aspects of contemporary writing practice and theory that are directly related to and challenge their own practice. Students are also expected to relate research in this subject to the design of their thesis project unit and to explore significant critical relationships between recognised, successful, contemporary creative practice and their own contribution to the Honours thesis project.

Subject objectives/outcomes

At the end of this subject students will be able to:

1. use innovative practices in writing and composition
2. apply their understanding of technical realisation across a set of contemporary media
3. relate technical realisation in creative practice to the conceptualisation of a work and its planning
4. investigate the psychology of creative practice
5. discriminate between relevant formats and technologies of production and design
6. conduct research specifically connected with the student's own creative practice with equal reference both to technique and to theme.

Contribution to graduate profile

This subject contributes to the student's intellectual capabilities:

• in creative communication
• in creative research.

It contributes to the student's professional capabilities:

• to understand contemporary cultural forms and innovative practices
• to think critically and creatively about future developments in literary and art practice and in cultural industries.

It contributes to the student's personal capabilities:

• to manage the creative process
• to produce creative work.

Teaching and learning strategies

There are twelve weeks of in-class work. Students are asked to read, watch and engage with a variety of contemporary works. Novels, poetry collections, film, scripts, hypertext and other texts are selected as core examples: students are asked to read these works in their own time. Examples and instances will also be presented in class. There will be other selective presentation of exemplary material, provided by students and lecturers equally, from these and other creative works throughout the course.

In-class study will consist of lecture style material, seminar discussion and presentation by students of short researched papers on the works under consideration and on the creative design of the students' own project work. These papers will be logged on the class website to allow maximum access to workshop members. Students are also asked to present their own creative work to the class. Student in-class presentations are mainly focused around the themes of relevant knowledges of creative practice derived from the exemplary material.

Content

Course structure consists of three modules: poetry and poetics, literary fiction and non fiction and, thirdly, non-linear writing and hypertext. In each of these modules, key examples of contemporary practice and key concepts associated with an innovative aspect of such practice are introduced. Students present in-class and on-line responses which become the basis of assessment item 1 (Experiment) - an essay to do with innovative creative practice in the student's chosen genre.

The final four weeks of the subject are a creative writing style workshop for student review and discussion of the final assessment item (Creative Work in Progress) – a creative work which is related to the final Honours thesis project.

Assessment

Assessment item 1: 'Experiment'

Assessment item 2: 'Creative Work in Progress'

Minimum requirements

Students are expected to read the subject outline to ensure they are familiar with the subject requirements. Since class discussion and participation in activities form an integral part of this subject, you are expected to attend, arrive punctually and actively participate in classes. If you experience difficulties meeting this requirement, please contact your lecturer. Students who have a reason for extended absence (e.g., illness) may be required to complete additional work to ensure they achieve the subject objectives.

Indicative references

To be supplied module by module.