Writing Voices
Module code: EN3119
Module co-ordinator: to be confirmed
Aims
This module considers the central importance of 'voice' in creative writing. Learning to write is often conceived as a process of 'finding your voice'. While this is useful as a starting point, learning to write well is also a process of finding, imagining, and staging other people's voices. This module investigates, through relevant reading and creative practice, forms that depend on staging voices. Forms and genres covered may include:
- Dialogue in prose fiction
- Radio drama
- Monologues
- Poetry in performance
Since this is a module about the centrality of voice, you will give a short assessed oral presentation of your own work. You will also be expected to reflect on the ways that your work relates to the wider context of the genre in which you are writing.
Learning
The module will be delivered in ten two-hour weekly seminars. Seminars will consist of relevant creative writing workshop exercises, feedback sessions, mini-lectures on particular topics, screenings of relevant material, rehearsals for oral presentations, and oral presentations by students. By the end of the module, students should be able to:
- Recognise the central importance of 'voice' and 'vocality' in creative writing
- Analyse the varied ways in which voices are used by writers in different literary genres and contexts
- Write, using techniques you have acquired, for some of these different genres and contexts
- Demonstrate skills and experience in the oral presentation of creative writing
Assessment
The module uses a three-part assessment.
- Oral Presentation: a short reading from your own creative writing or a talk on a chosen subject or a good-quality recording of a reading or talk given elsewhere (for example, at an off-campus event or in a studio) (10% of final mark)
- Creative Piece: your own creative writing, between 3,000 and 3,500 words (or equivalent), in one of the genres covered in the module (60% of final mark)
- Reflective Commentary: a short essay of between 1,000 and 1,500 words, in which you discuss the process of writing the Creative Piece and place it in relation to its wider context (30% of final mark)