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Content: This practical module will explore and apply key concepts, approaches, and techniques necessary for the shaping of narratives in writing. The possibilities of writing today will be investigated in the widest possible manner: from writing that exists in socially diverse spaces, outside of any formal context of publication (graffiti, tattoos, public inscriptions, protest banners, asemic writing, concrete poetry), to writing for legacy media forms on page and screen, and writing for digital and social media. Relevant genres will extend from spoken-word poetry to screenwriting, from expository writing to the personal essay, and from literary fiction to SFF (Science Fiction and Fantasy), YA (Young Adult), and suspense and historical fiction.

Through the study of diverse examples from modern and contemporary writing, as well as a diverse range of writers’ reflections on their art, the module will explore matters such as borrowing, memory and invention; voice, style and rhetoric; structure, pattern and plot; collage, sampling and chance procedures; setting, scene and characterization; detail, argument and action; dialogue, point of view and tense; and adaptation and (un)originality. Due emphasis will be given to forms of writing adapted or invented for digital media: born-digital forms such as blogposts, long reads, Twitter threads, subscription newsletters, or Instapoems, and forms that have expanded and evolved under digital publishing, such as the first-person confessional essay.

We will also consider the applicability of the techniques we study to extra-literary forms of writing in personal and professional life: marketing copy or pitch documents; reports, memos, proposals and other policy documents; speeches, petitions, call-outs and letters of complaint; emails, social media updates, personal journals, love-letters, sexts, and so on.

Teaching delivery: 10 x 1-hour lectures and 10 x 2-hour workshops.

This module is taught on the ¹û¶³Ó°Ôº East campus in Stratford.