Writing Lives (Online)
Overview
Is there a true story that only you can tell? This course is designed to provide you with the skills you need to turn experiences, recollections and real-life phenomena into literary works that are enjoyable and accessible to a wider audience.
Are there stories, events or circumstances in your own experience, your family's, or those of people known to you, that you've always wanted to investigate, and that you think would make good reading? This course will provide you with all you need to shape your materials into an enjoyable and accessible literary work. 'Life Writing' is prose non-fiction devoted to exploring the events and emotions of real lives. The Life Writing course will enable you to recognise which things are significant, how to characterize them in way that really brings them to life, and how to structure them into a narrative that will keep a reader's interest.
For information on how the courses work, and a link to our course demonstration site, please click here.
Programme details
Unit One: Getting Started
Getting acquainted, how to work with the truth, memory, good practices.
Unit Two: Point-of-view
Memory and imagination, using the senses, finding a voice.
Unit Three: Descriptive Writing
Getting the surfaces right, getting below the surfaces.
Unit Four: Characterizing Others
Revealing motivation, psychological depths and habits.
Unit Five: Characterizing Yourself
Re-living your life inside and outside time and experience – making yourself knowable.
Unit Six: Dialogue
Writing the authentic, the important and the plausible simultaneously.
Unit Seven: Structure
Finding the plot in history; realising potential and maximising drama.
Unit Eight: Sequence and Situation
How to form episodes combining characters, dialogue and description.
Unit Nine: Beginnings and Endings
How to start and where to stop.
Unit Ten: Re-writing and Editing
Finishing, polishing, re-making, re-telling, expanding and cutting.
We strongly recommend that you try to find a little time each week to engage in the online conversations (at times that are convenient to you) as the forums are an integral, and very rewarding, part of the course and the online learning experience.
Recommended reading
To participate in the course you will need to have regular access to the Internet and you will need to buy the following book:
Roorbach, B., Writing Life Stories: How to Make Memories into Memoirs, Ideas into Essays and Life into Literature (Writer’s Digest Books, 2008)
Recommended, but not required:
Bell, J. and A. Motion, eds., The Creative Writing Coursebook (Macmillan, 2001)
Hackles, L., Writing from Life: How to Turn Your Personal Experiences into Profitable Prose (How To Books, 2008)
Oke, M., Times of Our Lives: The Essential Companion to Writing Your Own Life Story (How To Books, 2004)
Certification
To earn credit (CATS points) for your course you will need to register and pay an additional £10 fee for each course you enrol on. You can do this by ticking the relevant box at the bottom of the enrolment form or when enrolling online. If you do not register when you enrol, you have up until the course start date to register and pay the £10 fee.
For more information on CATS point please click on the link below: http://www.conted.ox.ac.uk/studentsupport/faq/cats.php
Coursework is an integral part of all online courses and everyone enrolled will be expected to do coursework, but only those who have registered for credit will be awarded CATS points for completing work at the required standard. If you are enrolled on the Certificate of Higher Education you need to indicate this on the enrolment form but there is no additional registration fee.
Assignments are not graded but are marked either pass or fail.
All students who successfully complete this course, whether registered for credit or not, are eligible for a Certificate of Completion. Completion consists of submitting both course assignments and actively participating in the course forums. Certificates will be available, online, for those who qualify after the course finishes.
IT requirements
This course is delivered online; to participate you must to be familiar with using a computer for purposes such as sending email and searching the Internet. You will also need regular access to the Internet and a computer meeting our recommended minimum computer specification.
Fees
Home/EU Fee: £405.00
Non-EU Fee: £495.00
Take this course for CATS points: £10.00
Tutor
Mr Jeremy Hughes
Jeremy Hughes has published two novels – Wingspan (2013) and Dovetail (2011). He was awarded first prize in the PoetryWales competition and was short-listed for an Eric Gregory Award. He also publishes short fiction, life writing and reviews. He studied for the Master’s in creative writing at Oxford.
Course aims
This course aims to provide students with insight into the major aspects affecting life-writing and to enable them to use these features confidently in writing their own creative non-fiction.
Teaching methods
- Introductory section, outlining key areas of work within each unit.
- Description of required reading and recommended reading.
- Presentation of materials taken from additional (eg. online) sources, relevant to each unit.
- Online discussion forum.
- Online personal study diary.
- Area for short responses to literary extracts from key texts.
- Tutor responses to forum and exercises.
- Assessment and feedback.
Learning outcomes
By the end of this course students will be expected to understand:
- Key features (such as perspective, dialogue, etc) in a work of life-writing.
- The applicability of such characteristics in their own work.
- How to use at least some of these aspects of technical expertise with increased skill and confidence.
By the end of this course students will be expected to have gained the following skills:
- The ability to recognize and name key features in contemporary life-writing.
- Knowledge of why authors employ these features and what their different effects are.
- Increased confidence in their own use of such features as enhancements to the development of an individual ‘voice’ in life-writing.
Assessment methods
Assessment for this course is based on two written assignments - one short assignment of between 500-750 words due half way through the course and one longer assignment of between 1250-1500 words due at the end of the course.
Assignments are not graded but are marked either pass or fail.
Level and demands
FHEQ level 4, 10 weeks, approx 10 hours per week, therefore a total of about 100 study hours.
Terms and conditions
Terms and conditions for applicants and students on this course
Sources of funding
Information on financial support