Overview

Crime Writing is made up of twelve lessons, including two opportunities for you to gain written feedback on your writing from the course tutors. The course also offers you a range of opportunities to try out different writing techniques, participate in peer discussion, and other (crime related) interactive activities.

From the day you enrol, you have up to 16 weeks to complete the course. We recommend spending a minimum of one week on each lesson.

Designed by Dr Inga Simpson, this course helps you develop a deeper understanding of crime writing and its sub-genres, explore research and planning ideas, and expand your writing skills. Each lesson includes a range of classic and contemporary readings featuring different subjects and styles, a discussion of the techniques used by a variety of writers, and opportunities for you to experiment with your own writing.

You will work through the process of coming up with an idea for a novel, developing and researching that idea, drafting and editing the opening chapters, and writing a synopsis to pitch to a publisher. You’ll cover ideas and techniques for developing plot, character and setting, as well as elements of style. You will also explore the sub-genres of crime fiction including true crime, and the pleasures of writing series crime fiction.

Content

This course is comprised of twelve lessons:

1. Generating Ideas
2. Research
3. Sub-genre and Crossing Genres
4. Character and Viewpoint
5. Plot and Structure
6. Setting
7. Sentences and Imagery
8. True Crime
9. Crime Series
10. Editing
11. Markets, Opportunities, and Pitching
12. Where to from Here?

Feedback

There are two formal feedback opportunities during this course. These are opportunities for you to submit pieces of your own writing for feedback both from the course mentors. This feedback will be in the form of written notes and will be focused on helping you identify the strengths and weaknesses in your writing, and on ways to move your writing forward. Feedback may include, where appropriate and relevant, advice about further reading, strategies for improving the work, potential markets for publication, etc.

Writing Task One: Due Lesson Six:

Your first submission for feedback, up to a total of 5000 words, consists of the opening chapters of your draft crime novel or true crime book.

Writing Task Two: Due Lesson Twelve

Your second submission for feedback  should include a synopsis and edited first 5000 words of your draft crime novel.

Each lesson includes an opportunity for you to submit your writing for informal feedback from both other writers in the course, and the course tutors. The tasks for each lesson contribute to the development of your Writing Tasks, and the feedback you receive will focus on helping you finetune your project. Feedback from the course tutors on your posts to forums and so on will not be in-depth, but will be personal and timely. You will not necessarily receive feedback on all of your posts or comments in the course, though you can expect to receive frequent, personal comments most of the time.

There is no marks-based assessment in this course. This is partly because we believe that a focus on grades – on getting a good-enough grade, on writing something to please your teacher or peers – can block you from exploring your writing in an open, exploratory and experimental way. It can get you all tied up in knots worrying about grades, when what you could be focused on is the experience of learning something new, taking risks, and having fun.

By working through to the end of this course, and completing all of the exercises and writing submissions, you will produce:

A detailed research plan
A polished synopsis and cover letter
The first 5000 words of your crime novel (You are free, of course to write much more!)

Resources

In order to gain the most out of this course you will be asked to engage with a range of material, including short fiction, novels and works of non-fiction. The course tutors will also encourage you to read material outside the set readings, and will recommend works or authors in response to your interactions in the course.

Prerequisites

You don't need to have any prior experience or knowledge to enrol in this course, although you may find it helpful to have a play around in our introductory courses, Playing with Prose or Playing With Poetry in order to familiarise yourself with Olvar Wood onLine (OWL).

All of the courses in OWL are based on our philosophy that writers thrive through a mixed diet of reading, writing and thinking.

If you’ve never written fiction before, you might also like to consider our Chapter Two course, Fiction, which explores the basics of writing prose fiction across a range of genres.

About Learning Online

It’s a good idea, if you’ve never used an online learning facility before, to check out our free online Sampler course before you sign up for Children’s Writing. The Sampler will give you an opportunity to see what our online courses look and feel like, and how most of the interaction works.

OWL’s online courses work by inviting you to engage with your tutor, and with other writers enrolled in the course through a range of interfaces, including chat rooms, discussion forums, wikis, and standard, content-based webpages.

Throughout the site, you’ll find there is instant help available – usually indicated by a ?, which you can click to get more information. If you still can’t work out what to do, simply post a message in the ‘help!’ forum, or email your tutors.

Although the course is run online, we also ask you to work offline on your writing, using old-fashioned techniques like writing in a journal, stretching your imagination and reading, reading, reading.

To get the most out of this course, we recommend you set aside at least four hours for each lesson/week:

• one hour to read the online lesson material;

• one hour to think and dream and mess about with ideas;

• one hour for trying out the various writing techniques each lesson includes;

• one hour for posting your writing, providing feedback or commentary on other writer’s work, participating in discussion forums and chats, and so on.

• We recommend that you allocate a bit of extra time the first week to familiarise yourself with the online learning forum.

How To Enrol

You can enrol in any course on OWL by going to the website, and clicking on the course title. You'll be guided through the process of creating a user profile and paying for your course (via Paypal).

If you'd prefer to have your user profile created for you (you can edit it later), and pay by either direct deposit or cheque, please contact us by email at admin@olvarwood.com.au