Module Identifier | EN32420 | ||
Module Title | THE WRITING CLASS | ||
Academic Year | 2001/2002 | ||
Co-ordinator | Dr Patricia Duncker | ||
Semester | Semester 2 | ||
Other staff | Mrs Carol Marshall | ||
Course delivery | Seminar | 20 Hours (10 x 2 hr seminar workshops) | |
Assessment | Portfolio | Two portfolios of your own writing, one mainly of poetry and one mainly of prose. Your portfolios must include early drafts, revised versions and a piece of critical commentary and reflection on your own writing methods. Each portfolio not to exceed 2,500 words. | 100% |
Resit assessment | Resubmit any failed elements and/or make good any missing elements |
Assessment
Two portfolios of your own writing, one mainly of poetry and one mainly of prose. Your portfolios must include early drafts, revised versions and a piece of critical commentary and reflection on your own writing methods. Each portfolio not to exceed 2,500 words. You will be expected to work in collaboration with other members of the group on occasions and to produce written work for each session. I won't accept excuses for not doing this. Writing regularly - every week - is the most important aspect of the class.
Programme:
1. Introduction: Craft, Graft and Inspiration: The Practice of Making Writing: Strict forms: Naughty Verses: Musical Forms
2. Poetry: Confronting Cliches or How to Be Fearless of Bad Writing
3. Strict form: Writing sonnets
4. Lyric: Songs
5. Narrative verse: Ballads
6. The Discipline of Free Verse
7. Prose: A Question of Length and Shape: The Novel, the Novelle, The Tale and the Short Story
8. Character
9.Dialogue and Description
10. Problems of Genre and Meaning in Prose Fiction
Suggested Reading
Beware of the 'How To Write a Bestseller' writing manuals, although these can be interesting eye-openers about the writing industry. The most interesting writing on writing is often also the most eccentric and opinionated and always by writers who have produced excellent, challenging work. Look at writers' notebooks. Everything is of interest, even the doodles. Of especial interest are: the diary of Virginia Woolf, the notebooks of Henry James, Flaubert's letters, all of them, but especially the letters he wrote while he was writing Madame Bovary. See also the letters of Emily Dickinson, which often contain drafts, or poems, which she sent as letters. On fiction in process one of the most interesting books you can read is Albert Camus's unfinished last novel Le Premier Homme (The First Man), published by Penguin. This has some of his notes and hesitations reproduced on the page. It is a glimpse into a master's workshop. For the full horror of Hollywood try William Goldman listed below.
CHESTER, Gail & NIELSEN, Sigrid (eds) In Other Words; Writing as a Feminist (Hutchinson 1987)
GERRARD, Nicci, Into The Mainstream: How Feminism Has Changed Women's Writing (Pandora 1989)
GOLDMAN, William Adventures in the Screen Trade: A Personal View of Hollywood and Screenwriting (Abacus 1996)
HIGGINS, George V. On Writing (Bloomsbury 1992)
KAPPELER, Susanne, The Pornography of Representation (Polity Press 1986)
LAWRENCE, D.H. Phoenix Vols 1 & 2 See Section 'Literature and Art'. Especially essays 'Introduction to His Paintings', 'Why the Novel Matters', Moby Dick'.
MILLS, Paul. Writing in Action (Routledge 1996)
NEWMAN, Jenny et al, The Writer's Workbook (Arnold 2000)
O'CONNOR, Flannery, Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose (Faber and Faber 1972)
OLSEN, Tillie, Silences (Virago 1980)
SELLERS, Susan ed. Delighting the Heart: A Notebook by Women Writers (The Women's Press 1989)
STEIN, Gertrude, Lectures in America (1935: Virago 1985) See especially 'Poetry and Grammar'.
WOOLF, Virginia, A Writer's Diary (1953)