Creative Writing (a Practical Approach)

Course content:

MAIN OBJECTIVE

This course will help students become more aware of their writing “voice” by helping them strengthen basic writing skills and learn the basics of writing fiction, poetry, drama and creative non-fiction.

SPECIFIC OBJECTIVES

• Understand the difference between literary/non-literary language
• Improve overall writing and communication skills: word choice, simplicity, the importance of rewriting, coherence, eliminating clutter, and the use of literary devices.
• Understand the basic working of fiction, poetry, drama, and creative non-fiction by examining point of view, dialogue, time, style, etc.

SYLLABUS

1. Introduction
2. Fiction, Non-Fiction, and Creative Non-Fiction
3. Poetry
4. Novel and Novella
5. Short stories and micro-stories
6. Time and plot, the knot
7. Character, point of view, place
8. Tone, Rhythm, Voice
9. Dialogue
10. Other creative writing genres – the sky is the limit

METHODOLOGY

This online course will be run in our virtual classroom (laboratoriodeescritura.com/aulavirtual), where the course programme is designed with a dynamic and creative learning methodology. The course is organized into 10 topics of online theory and practice using collaborative learning tools and individual and group participation. Students can access the platform at any time of day, where they will find readings, exercises and an ongoing discussion forum. The teacher will moderate the classes and monitor the progress of students entirely through the online platform.

There will be a face-to-face classroom session at Barcelona.

General Aspects

• Students will primarily doing individual work, but at times they will work with their professor or fellow students.
• Most of the readings will be either downloadable (from this platform) or links will be provided to articles that can be found on the internet.

Teaching Activities

• Open-ended questions that invite reflection.
• Reading and writing for each class.
• Debate on the readings and active participation in the Forum.
• Debate and resolving of any doubts in Videoconference and Chat sessions that will be scheduled by the professor.
• Written texts will be submitted in the section “Tasks”.
• Course evaluation

The Professor will also make use of the notice board to keep students up to date on any changes, and the calendar to let them know about the due dates for writing pieces and scheduled Chat sessions.

Reviewing Student writing

The professor will make comments on the texts and will offer a general evaluation along with advice on how to improve the writing.

CERTIFICATION

The Laboratorio de Escritura will present the student with a certificate of completion of the course if the student has successfully carried out a minimum level of participation (forums, chats, email, message board), and has submitted all writing tasks.