Key facts

Type	Weekly Classes
Location	Oxford
Address	Ewert House Ewert Place Summertown Oxford
Dates	Tue 1 Oct 2013 to Tue 18 Mar 2014 Day: Tuesday Time of meeting: 10.30am-12.30pm Number of meetings: 20
Subject area(s)	Creative Writing
CATS points	20
Fees	From £325.00
Application status	Applications being accepted
Course code	O13P793CRW
Course contact	If you have any questions about this course, please email ppweekly@conted.ox.ac.uk.

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Overview

For every novel or story written, hundreds more lie unfinished. Through writing and discussion, this course will help you harness technique, craft and motivation to revitalise both untried ideas and unfinished work, and set them on the way to completion.

Description

Writing novels and story collections calls for a special kind of stamina and courage, and few writers manage to produce longer fiction without meeting and overcoming considerable tests of both. This course addresses these challenges in practical ways. Weekly writing tasks will unravel and explore the technical constituents of fiction – theme, character, point of view, plot, narrative arc, setting – and help students identify where and what in their work-in-progress, or in their idea for a piece of fiction, might need fresh thinking, development and support. Students will keep a writing diary to encourage good writing routine and develop craft. The course will also help students clear some psychological barriers that can stand in the way of ambitions to go the distance. By the end of the course students will have begun or progressed with their own work, and learned strategies for writing all the way to completion.

Programme details

Week 1: Introducing the course: format and participants. Individual aims. What is a writer’s outlook? Exercise: Loving language.
Week 2: The autobiographical nature of fiction: the truth, the half-truth and anything but the truth.
Week 3: The habit of Art: the diary of record and intention. Your desk. Observation, reading, writing prompts
Week 4: How to tell your story. Genre, form and style. The pitch. Reading in small groups.
Week 5: Showing not telling. The five narrative modes. Reading and critiquing students’ work.
Week 6: What’s the point of stories? Narrative logic: archetypes, myth, order out of chaos. Reading and critiquing students’ work.
Week 7: Who’s telling the story? Narrative voices. Reading and critiquing students’ work.
Week 8: Writing plans. Reading and critiquing students’ work.
Week 9: Why characters come first. The Note in the Window. Reading and critiquing students’ work.
Week 10: Students' goals revisited. Review of plans and diaries.
Week 11: New Year’s Writing Resolutions. Research and other distractions. Reading and critiquing students’ work
Week 12: Narrative arc and momentum. Dramatising, telling, skipping the action. Reading and critiquing students’ work.
Week 13: Characters in action: desire, conflict, jeopardy, resolution. Reading and critiquing students’ work.
Week 14: Dialogue. Reading and critiquing students’ work.
Week 15: Point of view. Reading and critiquing students’ work.
Week 16: Setting - as character, mirror, catalyst. Reading and critiquing students’ work.
Week 17: How to keep going. Routes to publication. Reading and critiquing students’ work.
Week 18: Review of writing plans. Reading and critiquing students’ work.
Week 19: What to do when you’ve finished. Agents, publishers and other monsters. Reading and critiquing students’ work.
Week 20: How to start the next one.

Background Reading:
Dorothea Brande Becoming a Writer (foreword Malcolm Bradbury) Pan 1996

Staff

Course aims

Course Aim:
To equip new and practising writers with the skills and confidence to finish a work of long fiction.

Course Objectives:
1. To improve technical and critical ability.
2 To develop craft.
3. To increase self-confidence and enjoyment of writing.

Assessment methods

Portfolio of 1000 words of original writing, up-to-date writing diary, writing plan for completion of project (3)

Teaching methods

Individual, small group asnd whole group work. Writing exercises and homework tasks, discussion, reading

Teaching outcomes

By the end of the course students will be expected to:
1. have written at least 1000 original words of either a novel or story collection
2. have acquired the skills, insights and confidence necessary to proceed towards future completion of the project.

Libraries

Reading List .

Click above for full reading list.

Fee options

Programme Fee

EU Fee: £325.00

Non-EU Fee: £325.00

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