Module description
This practice-based module aims to develop students’ sense of non-fiction-writing as a creative act, and to introduce some of the practical skills and techniques essential to a variety of forms including: memoir and the personal essay; biography; nature-writing; reportage and cultural criticism.
Through studying a wide range of non-fictional texts, we will explore the ways in which writers engaged in supposedly factual writing nonetheless take creative risks and make the same kinds of narrative decisions as fiction-writers. Throughout, the question of voice will be crucial. Are these narrators openly personal or is their personality only implicit? Do they claim objectivity or do they find narrative strategies to show the provisionality of factual knowledge?
The module will be taught via a two-hour weekly seminar. In the first hour of the seminar, technical questions will be addressed via the study of exemplary texts; the second hour will take the form of a workshop in which students critique one another’s work. By the end of the course the students will have developed an individual voice as a non-fiction writer and gained a understanding of the key strategies and resources of the form. They will also have been introduced to some of the best non-fiction writing being produced today.
Assessment details
A work of creative non-fiction of 3,000 words (100%)
Educational aims & objectives
The module enables creative writing students to move beyond their work on fiction and poetry to think about creative writing as also including non-fiction. Through introducing them to a range of non-fictional texts, it encourages them to think specifically about questions of voice and genre. It also encourages them to think about their own essay writing as a creative act and to think about ways the writing they are learning in their degree can take them in new directions as critics or writers outside the academy.
Learning outcomes
By the end of the module, the students will be able to demonstrate intellectual, transferable and practicable skills appropriate to a Level 5 module and in particular will be able to:
- Write in a variety of genres and mediums and adopt a voice appropriate for each
- Demonstrate greater insight into the choices they have made as writers and the traditions they might appeal to in supporting those choices
- Demonstrate knowledge of a range of creative non-fiction texts and develop confidence in critiquing the success or failure of different aspects of these
Teaching pattern
Two-hour seminar, weekly