Overview

Non-Fiction is comprised of twelve lessons focused on helping you develop your skills in writing non-fiction while working up at least two pieces of writing. The course also includes two opportunities for you to gain written feedback on your writing from the course tutors. During the course you will also have various opportunities to try out a range of writing styles and techniques, share your work with other writers and participate in interactive online learning tools, such as discussion forums, chatrooms and wikis.

Taught by Dr Inga Simpson and Dr Nike Bourke, this course focuses on non-fiction writing, including articles, essays, criticism and reviews. Each lesson includes a range of examples, a discussion of techniques used by a variety of writers, and opportunities for you to experiment with your own writing.

Non-Fiction begins by working through an example of a non-fiction article, highlighting the process of writing a piece of non-fiction, from coming up with a range of ideas and pitching them to potential publishers, to fine-tuning your essay or article. The second half of the course focuses on some of the key elements within non-fiction writing, such as writing about people, places, and experiences in a way that captures your readers' imaginations.

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 Sampler course, or one of 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 thought about your writing practice that way before, or you’d like to learn more about how to integrate your writing, reading and thinking, you might find our Chapter One course Reading for Writers useful for opening up your practice, exploring ideas around inspiration, writers block, how to ‘read like a writer’ and so on.

Content

This course is comprised of 12 lessons.

1. Generating & Pitching Ideas
2. Research for Writers
3. Interviewing Techniques
4. Story & Argument
5. Evidence & Imagery
6. Editing & Proofreading
• First Writing Project Due
7. Markets for Non-Fiction
8. Writing About People
9. Writing About Places
10. Writing About Art
11. Writing About History
12. Writing About Experience
    • Second Writing Project due

Feedback

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 feedback on them 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 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 are two formal feedback opportunities during this course. These are opportunities for you to submit pieces of your own writing for feedback both from your peers in the course, and from the course mentor. 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 Project One: Due Lesson Six

• Your first submission for feedback and discussion with your peers consists of a short non-fiction piece up to a total of 5000 words. You will identify a topic or theme for your first project in the first lesson, and be guided through the process of researching and writing your article during the first six lessons of the course.

Writing Project Two: Due Lesson Twelve

• Your second submission for feedback, and discussion with your peers, will be a new non-fiction piece(s) up to a total of 5000 words. You will identify a market and topic for your second project in the seventh lesson, and be guided through the process of developing your project during the second six lessons of the course.

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.

Resources

In order to gain the most out of this course you will be asked to engage with a range of reading material. All of the readings for this course are available through the online interface as downloadable PDFs, word documents or webpages.

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.

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