WRIT201 - Emerging Writing

Year

Credit points

Campus offering

Prerequisites

WRIT100 The Writers Craft OR WRIT101 Creative Genres OR ENGL110 Reading Literature: Form and Genre OR ENGL111 Literature Across Time and Space OR WLIT200 Medieval and Renaissance Masterpieces: the Rise of the English Literary Tradition OR WLIT201 The Age of the Novel: 1600-1900 OR WLIT300 Romanticism to Postmodernism: Movements Toward the Literary Present

Unit rationale, description and aim

This is an advanced unit in the Creative Writing minor sequence. Innovation and disruption are core dimensions of the contemporary cultural landscape. In order to remain current in professional writing settings, students need to develop skills around engaging with cutting-edge practices and practitioners.

Emerging Writing gives students an opportunity to engage with emerging writing practices and opportunities. The students will examine the works of innovative, adventurous new writers and consider cutting edge practices, literary modes and avenues of production. The student's own work will be directed towards throwing off the burdens of legacy, habit and convention, focusing anew on the power of the word in many forms. The unit examines the importance of technology in enabling the distribution of the work of emerging writers. It also considers how the internet allows communities of reading and how creative writers can take advantage of this.

The unit aims to expose students to new and innovative writing and encourage them to freely experiment with the tools of creative writing.

Learning outcomes

To successfully complete this unit you will be able to demonstrate you have achieved the learning outcomes (LO) detailed in the below table.

Each outcome is informed by a number of graduate capabilities (GC) to ensure your work in this, and every unit, is part of a larger goal of graduating from ACU with the attributes of insight, empathy, imagination and impact.

Explore the graduate capabilities.

On successful completion of this unit, students should be able to:

LO1 - Analyse examples of contemporary creative writing (GA4, GA8, GA9)

LO2 - Research the nature of ‘convention’ in preceding forms of creative writing (GA4, GA8, GA9, GA10)

LO3 - Create fiction or non-fiction writing responding to contemporary cultural and technological contexts (GA4, GA5, GA8, GA9, GA10)

Graduate attributes

GA4 - think critically and reflectively 

GA5 - demonstrate values, knowledge, skills and attitudes appropriate to the discipline and/or profession 

GA8 - locate, organise, analyse, synthesise and evaluate information 

GA9 - demonstrate effective communication in oral and written English language and visual media 

GA10 - utilise information and communication and other relevant technologies effectively.

Content

Topics will include: 

• experiment and convention 
• genre-bending fiction 
• fact and fiction in ‘faction’ 
• fan fiction 
• online writing 
• interaction of technology and writing 
• writing and reading communities 
• stories told via artifacts and fragments 
• relationship between form/structure and content 

Learning and teaching strategy and rationale

This unit engages students in active learning activities, such as reading, writing, discussion and problem-solving to promote analysis, synthesis and evaluation of class content in the context of workshops.  

The learning and teaching strategies in this unit will start with initial exercises in close reading for the analysis of textual examples drawn from the history of experimentation in literature. This will be accompanied by writing exercises designed to encourage understanding of innovations and experiments as they related to cultural and technological shifts. The production of more developed writing will be fostered through a staged research process in early- to mid-semester, followed by redrafting, workshopping, and revision of students’ work.   

Assessment strategy and rationale

The assessment tasks for this unit have been designed to contribute to high quality student learning by both helping students learn (assessment for learning), and by measuring explicit evidence of their learning (assessment of learning). Assessments have been developed to meet the unit learning outcomes and develop graduate attributes consistent with University assessment requirements. These have been designed so that they use a variety of tasks to measure the different learning outcomes of the unit. In order to pass this unit, students are required to achieve an overall score of 50% or more. The schedule provides scaffolded learning with opportunities for students to monitor their own progress, practise their skills and receive feedback 

1. Analysis of a Writing Field  

The purpose of this assessment is to expose students to a variety of forms of contemporary writing. It will provide students with an opportunity to analyse the characteristics of texts that had or continue to have a claim to being avant-garde or in some way innovative or experimental. The strategy of assessment used will be the production of a series of short analytical observations of form, technique and content in texts selected from set material. Students are required to demonstrate their knowledge of a variety of current forms 

2. Research Writing Task 

The purpose of this assessment is for students to collect material on content and technique that will form the basis of the portfolio of work in Assessment 3. Students will be able to draw on their knowledge of a particular form of writing (gained in Assessment 1) and use that as a starting point for their research. The strategy of assessment used will be a presentation, in written and oral form that displays the research material and explains its anticipated use in the production of the writing in the portfolio of work in Assessment 3. Students are required to research the nature of ‘convention’ in preceding forms of creative writing in preparation for a creative writing task. 

3. Portfolio  

The purpose of this assessment is for students to produce their own creative writing departing from existing conventions. The strategy of assessment will include in-class workshopping sessions and written peer responses to works in progress. Students are required to write a creative piece or pieces utilising a particular form of writing and submit a portfolio comprising a total of 2000 words.  

Overview of assessments

Representative texts and references

Chatterjee, A. Creative writing: Writers on writing. Newmarket, Suffolk, U.K: CSW, 2013. 

Cottington, David. The Avant-Garde: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford, OUP, 2013 

Emerson, L..  Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press, 2014. 

Gerard, P. Art of creative research: A field guide for writers. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017. 

Grenville, K. Writing book: A practical guide for fiction writers (4th ed.). Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2015. 

Harper, G. The future for creative writing. John Wiley & Sons, 2014. 

Houen, Alex. Powers of Possibility: Experimental American Writing Since the 1960s. Oxford, OUP, 2016. 

Lambert, J. Digital storytelling: Capturing lives, creating community. New York, NY: Routledge, 2013. 

Scott, J. Creative writing and stylistics: Creative and critical approaches. Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. 

Sellers, H. The practice of creative writing: A guide for students. Boston: Bedford/St. Martins, 2017. 

Wade, S. A straightforward guide to creative writing (2nd ed.). Brighton: Straightforward, 2011.