EN910-45 Warwick Fiction Workshop 1
Introductory description
EN910
Module aims
The Aims and Objectives are broadly to enable students to develop writing skills in short fiction. They will also gain critical insights into contemporary literature and the processes of literary production. The module's aims can be broken down as follows:
I. To familiarise students who have pre-established advanced ability in writing with workshop techniques.
2. To enable the students to become aware of and be prepared to articulate the qualifies of their own writing.
3. To enable the students to see their own work in the context of contemporary published writing.
4. To establish some technical groundwork that will be common to learning and assessment in this module, including advanced concepts of form and narrative technique and basic IT publishing skills.
5. To enable students to produce limited examples of high quality work to meet specific challenges.
6. To enable the students to choose between genres of fiction for future specialisation in the degree.
Internationally recognised and highly skilled writers on the Warwick staff will run the workshop. The use of critical reflection on students' manuscripts will produce an atmosphere of invention and dialogue: a writing community. The career objective of the module will be to familiarise each student with the literary market place most suited to his or her own creative output and to help him or her sustain a career beyond the Warwick arts environment
Outline syllabus
This is an indicative module outline only to give an indication of the sort of topics that may be covered. Actual sessions held may differ.
The main purpose of this core module is broadly to enable students to develop writing skills specific to fiction, and to produce a body of work of this kind. They will also gain critical insights into contemporary literature and the processes of literary production.
While the module emphasizes short fiction, those already at work on novels will be free to submit extracts. Most of the term will be devoted to writing workshops. As a rule, the aim will be to workshop three pieces of fiction every week.
1 Introduction and preparation of the workshop schedule
2-10
Weekly 3-hour workshop, divided into three units. (Writing by one student is the focus of each unit, on a rotating basis. So the current work of three students is discussed each week, and work by each student is the focus of two to three workshops in the course of the term).
Each student will be able to reserve 2-3 slots per term for discussion of his/her work, depending on the size of the class. They should be ready to hand out hard copies of their stories/extracts to the tutor and their fellow students one week before they are to be workshopped. It is very important for all students to have read all stories/excerpts by the time they are due to be workshopped: they will learn as much by (constructively) criticising their classmates’ writing as they will by presenting their own work for review. We always begin with the texts to hand, though we go on to more general discussions about character, point of view, style, voice, narrative framing, plot, setting, the uses and abuses of autobiographical material, and dialogue. Where it seems helpful, the tutor will offer small tailored talks on these and related issues, as well as suggesting books that speak to the students’ particular interests.
Learning outcomes
By the end of the module, students should be able to:
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Indicative reading list
Short fiction
Borges, Jorge Luis, Labyrinths, 2000
Calvino, Italo, Invisible Cities, 2002
Carver, Raymond, Cathedral, 1999
Crace, Jim, Continent/Quarantine, 1987
Ford, Richard, The Granta Book of the American Long Story, 1999
Ford, Richard, ed The New Granta Book of the American Short Story, 2007
Kelman, James, Selected Stories, 2001
McEwan, Ian, First Love, Last Rites, 2006
Messud, Clare, Hunters, 2001
Munro, Alice, Selected Stories, 1997
Plimpton, George, ed., Beat Writers at Work: the Paris Review Interviews, 1999
Plimpton, George, ed., Women Writers at Work: the Paris Review Interviews, 2003
Rushdie, Salman, East, West, 1994
Simpson, Helen, Hey Yeah Right Get a Life, 2001
Taylor, Elisabeth, The Blush, 1958
Yates, Richard, Eleven Kinds of Loneliness, 1962
Winton, Tim, The Turning, 2005
Books about fiction
Booker, Christopher, The Seven Basic Plots: Why We Tell Stories, 2005
Wood, James, How Fiction Works, Jonathan Cape 2008
Atwood, Margaret, Negotiating with the Dead, Virago 2007
Morley, David, The Cambridge Introduction to Creative Writing, Cambridge University
Press 2007
Mullan, John, How Novels Work, Oxford University Press, 2006
Lodge, David, Consciousness and the Novel, Harvard University Press, 2002
Prose, Francine, Reading Like a Writer; Haper Perennial 2007
Subject specific skills
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Transferable skills
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Study time
| Type | Required |
|---|---|
| Seminars | 10 sessions of 3 hours (7%) |
| Tutorials | 1 session of 2 hours (0%) |
| Private study | 418 hours (93%) |
| Total | 450 hours |
Private study description
No private study requirements defined for this module.
Costs
No further costs have been identified for this module.
You must pass all assessment components to pass the module.
Students can register for this module without taking any assessment.
Assessment group A1
| Weighting | Study time | Eligible for self-certification | |
|---|---|---|---|
Assessment component |
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| Essay | 100% | Yes (extension) | |
Reassessment component is the same |
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Feedback on assessment
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Courses
This module is Core optional for:
- Year 1 of TCWA-Q3P7 MA in Writing
- Year 1 of TENA-Q3P7 MA in Writing