Chapter Three courses are for more experienced writers who wish to dig deeper into a particular genre or sub-genre of writing. Courses at this level presume that you already have an established writing practice, and a familiarity with the basics of writing. These courses each include 12 lessons, and three opportunities to gain detailed, personal feedback on your work.
Duration: 12 weeks to six months (self-paced)
Availability: Any time
This course is ideal for non-fiction writers interested in writing about nature and environment, fiction writers wanting to improve their capacity to capture landscape, and professional writers in science or environmental fields seeking to develop their writing skills. Nature Writing examines the history of nature writing, including Australian and international perspectives, representations of landscape, and concepts of wild and wilderness. You’ll explore a range of writing techniques for developing plot and character, describing nature, evoking a strong sense of place in fiction, and writing for advocacy.
OverviewDuration: 12 Weeks - 6 Months
Availability: Any time
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 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 OverviewAdvanced Fiction: The Novel is made up of twelve lessons, including three opportunities for you to gain written feedback on your writing from the course tutors, as well as participating in peer discussion. The course also includes a variety of opportunities for you to try out a range of writing techniques and ideas.
The focus in this course is on supporting you through developing a fiction project. Each lesson provides detailed notes and ideas, writing exercises, prompts and advice for thinking about your own novel.
The course focuses, in particular, on the three key aspects of writing the novel: viewpoint & time, characterisation, and style. In this course, you are encouraged to think deeply about your writing. You will stretch and deepend your understanding of each of these aspects of fiction, learning more about the deep structures of language and story, and how to use this knowledge to enrich your work.
In viewpoint and time, we begin by revising the basics of viewpoint and tense before quickly moving on to an examination of the different implicit and explicit functions of narrative viewpoints. We look at the ways in which time is represented in fiction, how philosophical understandings of time and duration, evolution and change, impact on our expectations of narrative tense.
In character, we look at how we understand human nature: how psychological, neurological and textual notions of consciousness impact on our representations of being. Together, we explore notions of being and character, partly by thinking through the implications of characterless fiction, multi-vocal fictions, and communal versus individual notions of identity.
In style, we look at sentences and paragraphs, exploring the deep grammar of literary fiction, its attention to the shape and sound of language. Its attachment to a kind of poetics of prose. We explore experiments with style, the sleight of hand of realism, and the formal innovations of contemporary authors.
In the final weeks, we look at structural and close editing, exploring ways to move beyond early, exploratory drafts into satisfying, coherent works of fiction.