Overview

Biographical Writing is ideal for writers contemplating a memoir, biographical or autobiographical writing project. This practical, hands-on course covers the writing process from start to finish, including: planning the project, how to conduct effective research, structuring your work, characterisation, setting, and publishing and marketing opportunities. You’ll take a close look at each of the genres within biographical writing: memoir, autobiography and biography. The course also explores the history and development of biographical writing, notions of truth and memory, and some of the ethical issues that need to be considered.

Each lesson includes discussion of a range of 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.

Course Structure

This course is comprised of 12 lessons.

• Introduction
• Truth & Memory
• Research & Development, Part One
• Research and Development, Part Two
• First writing task due
• Plot, structure and story
• Writing About Places
• Writing About People
• Profiles & Other Short Forms
• Second writing task due
• Biography
• Memoir & Autobiography
• Ethics
• Publication
  • Final writing task due

Feedback

There are several opportunities in each lesson for you to submit your writing for informal feedback from both other writers in the course, and the course tutors. 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 three opportunities for you to submit your writing for formal feedback 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 Task One: Lesson Four

• Your first submission for feedback and discussion with your peers consists of a research plan and draft synopsis for your biographical project up to 5000 words

Writing Task Two: Lesson Eight

• Your second submission for feedback and discussion with your peers consists of the introduction or opening chapter, or short pieces (memoir/biography/autobiography) up to a total of 5000 words.

Writing Task Three: Lesson Twelve

• Your third submission for feedback and discussion with your peers, again up to 5000 words, can include revised earlier submissions or a new chapter, extract or short biographical piece(s).

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 while developing your project for self-publication, or submission to agents and publishers.

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 free Sampler course, or try one of our introductory courses: Playing with Prose or Playing With Poetry in order to familiarise yourself with Olvar Wood onLine (OWL) and refresh your writing skills.

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.

If you’ve never written fiction before, you might also like to consider our Chapter Two course, Fiction, which explores techniques for researching and writing non-fiction across a range of genres.

Resources

In order to gain the most out of this course you will be asked to engage with a range of material, including biography, memoir, autobiography and non-fiction. 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