Course overview
This intermediate-level Creative Writing course explores how we construct narrative across different forms. Structured as an engagement with a series of readings in narratology and with primary texts from a range of forms and genres, the course offers a theoretical foundation to inform our creative practice, whether we are writing short fiction, creative nonfiction, narrative poetry, screenplays, or other forms such as fine art installation and virtual worlds. We will explore how to construct different points of view, voicing effects, and characterization, as well as consider the role of time, sequence, and occasion of narration in the development of narrative structures. The course explores innovative examples of narrative experiments across forms, genres, and periods, before finishing with a glimpse of how virtual reality constructs narrative now. Students will produce a theoretically inflected critical essay as well as a portfolio of creative works in multiple forms as a means of experimenting with different narrative techniques and approaches.
Course learning outcomes
- Demonstrate an ability to interpret and respond to a broad range of creative, critical, and theoretical texts relevant to the history and ongoing development of narrative theory and its practical applications
- Demonstrate the ability to frame creative and critical projects, produce plans for their research and execution, and fulfil these to deadlines;
- Engage rigorously and self-reflexively with selected creative, critical, and theoretical texts and the global and historical contexts of their production
- Write and revise polished creative and critical works that demonstrate high levels of clarity, insight, narrative innovation, and sophistication
- Critically evaluate their own and others' writing, both orally and in writing
- Engage seriously, sensitively, and respectfully with their peers, both in person and using online learning technologies, to provide substantive and productive feedback on creative and critical work