Texts

y separately published work icon Joe Cinque's Consolation Helen Garner , Sydney : Pan Macmillan Australia , 2004 Z1132428 2004 single work prose (taught in 26 units)

'In October 1997 a clever young law student at ANU made a bizarre plan to murder her devoted boyfriend after a dinner party at their house. Some of the dinner guests - most of them university students - had heard rumours of the plan. Nobody warned Joe Cinque. He died one Sunday, in his own bed, of a massive dose of rohypnol and heroin. His girlfriend and her best friend were charged with murder. Helen Garner followed the trials in the ACT Supreme Court. Compassionate but unflinching, this is a book about how and why Joe Cinque died. It probes the gap between ethics and the law; examines the helplessness of the courts in the face of what we think of as 'evil'; and explores conscience, culpability, and the battered ideal of duty of care.' (Source: Pan Macmillan website)

Garner takes 'a deliberately subjective and "literary" approach' to her material with an 'emphasis on a sympatheitic authorial persona as the source of the reader's perspective' (Susan Lever 'The Crimes of the Past: Anna Funder's Stasiland and Helen Garner's Joe Cinque's Consolation'. Paper delivered at the Association for the Study of Australian Literature (ASAL) conference 2006).

All About Eve!$!Dir. Joseph L. Mankiewicz!$! !$!!$!
Lolita!$!Nabakov, Vladimir!$! !$!!$!
Stanley Kubrick!$!Dir!$!Lolita [film]!$!!$!
Alexander Payne!$!Dir!$!Election [film]!$!!$!
Adrien Lyne!$!Dir!$!Lolita [film]!$!!$!
y separately published work icon The Slap Christos Tsiolkas , Crows Nest : Allen and Unwin , 2008 Z1739894 2008 single work novel (taught in 40 units)

'At a suburban barbecue, a man slaps a child who is not his own.

'This event has a shocking ricochet effect on a group of people, mostly friends, who are directly or indirectly influenced by the event.

'In this remarkable novel, Christos Tsiolkas turns his unflinching and all-seeing eye onto that which connects us all: the modern family and domestic life in the twenty-first century. The Slap is told from the points of view of eight people who were present at the barbecue. The slap and its consequences force them all to question their own families and the way they live, their expectations, beliefs and desires.

'What unfolds is a powerful, haunting novel about love, sex and marriage, parenting and children, and the fury and intensity - all the passions and conflicting beliefs - that family can arouse. In its clear-eyed and forensic dissection of the ever-growing middle class and its aspirations and fears, The Slap is also a poignant, provocative novel about the nature of loyalty and happiness, compromise and truth.' (Publisher's blurb)

Description

This is an advanced subject for students in the Master of Arts in Creative Writing. It brings together graduate writing students from a number of areas to workshop their own and each other's work, to provide and receive productive feedback on work-in-progress and to explore aspects of contemporary writing practice and theory that are both directly related to and/or challenge their own practice.

Subject objectives/outcomes

At the completion of this subject, students are expected to:

a. Have demonstrated creative, imaginative and fluent practices as writers;

b. Have developed their self-reflective critical and editing skills;

c. Have gained an insight into their own writing habits;

d. Have honed their skills in analysing the writing of others;

e. Have a clear understanding of the limits and possibilities of a variety of contemporary forms of creative prose, and how each differs from other prose forms.

Content

Reading

We approach the readings as writers, looking closely at the work of others to understand the choices and possibilities open to us. The readings include exemplary texts; critical essays; and reflections on the writing process. We shall be doing a close study of the readings, looking in detail at the idea of scene and dramatisation and the representation of reality. We shall pay particular attention to texture (description, character, place, language, rhythm), to time (elapsed time, speeding up, slowing down, pausing, lateral movement) to character and movement, and to the relationship of style, structure and subject matter.

The critical essays and the reflections on writing will be discussed in class.

Writing

Students will present a seminar paper reflecting a close reading and analysis of the examples they choose to illustrate the exploration of their topic. The examples should be photocopied and handed out the week before their seminar date. Each student will present their own writing for discussion in workshop either in small groups or to the whole class, at least twice during the semester. They will give one another oral and written feedback. The learning that takes place in a workshop stems from their involvement in the work of others as well as in their own. When considering a work, we find ways to raise questions and to locate problems through constructive criticism offered with goodwill and generosity.

Assessment

Assessment item 1: To workshop a creative work at least twice during semester

Objective(s): a, b, c, d

Weighting: 50%

Task: To present creative writing for discussion in workshop at least twice, and to hand in for assessment one polished piece of creative work. Length: 3000 words or equivalent.

Assessment criteria:

* Technical accomplishment of writing style

* Originality of ideas

* Dramatic and effective structuring of work.

Assessment item 2: To present a seminar paper reflecting a close reading and analysis of the chosen topic

Objective(s): c, d, e

Weighting: 50%

Length: 2000 words.

Assessment criteria:

* Demonstrated insight into the themes, techniques and issues chosen.

* Capacity to apply themes and issues arising from work under discussion to creative practice

* Effective presentation of the topic.

Students who have a reason for extended absence (e.g., illness) may be required to complete additional work to ensure they achieve the subject objectives.

Supplementary Texts

Reference

Style Manual: for Authors, Editors and Printers, Australian Government Publishing Service, Canberra, 2000.

Dykes, Barbara. 1992. Grammar Made Easy. Sydney: Hale & Ironmonger

Strunk, William & White, E. B. 1979. The Elements of Style, 3rd Edition. New York: MacMillan Publishing

Narrative Technique

Brande, Dorothea. 1981 (1934). Becoming a Writer. London: Macmillan.

Browne, Rennia & King, David, (Eds). 1993. Self Editing For Fiction Writers. New York: HarperCollins Publishers

Dillard, Annie. 1989. The Writing Life. New York: Harper & Row Publishers

Disher, Garry. 2001. Writing Fiction: an introduction to the craft. Sydney: Allen & Unwin.

Goldberg, Natalie. 1986. Writing Down the Bones. London: Shambhala

Grenville, Kate & Sue Woolfe. 1993. Making Stories: how 10 Australian novels were written. Sydney: Allen & Unwin.

Hirsch, Edward. 1991. How To Read A Poem and Fall In Love with Poetry. Florida: Harvest Books

Hodgins, Jack. 1993. A Passion for Narrative: a guide to writing fiction. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart.

King, Stephen. 2000. On Writing. London: Hodder & Stoughton.

Lodge, David. 1992. The Art of Fiction. Harmondsworth: Penguin

Lodge, David. 1997. The Practice of Writing - Essays Lectures, Reviews and a Diary. Harmondsworth: Penguin

Pack, Robert and Parini, Jay (Eds). 1991. Writers On Writing, A Bread Loaf Anthology. Hanover: Middlebury College Press, University Press of New England

Stern, Jerome. 1991. Making Shapely Fiction. New York: WW Norton & Co

Walker, Brenda (Ed). 2002. The Writers' Reader. Sydney: Halstead

Narratology

Booth, Wayne. 1961. The Rhetoric of Fiction. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Chatman, Seymour. 1978. Story and Discourse. Ithaca, NY: Cornell.

Genette, Gerard. 1980. Narrative Discourse. Trans. Jane E. Lewin. Ithaca, NY: Cornell.

Todorov, Tvetan. 1977. The Poetics of Prose. Trans. Richard Howard. Ithaca, NY: Cornell.

Screen Writing

Aronson, Linda. 2000. Scriptwriting Updated: New and Conventional Ways of Writing for the Screen. Australian Film Television & Radio School: Allen & Unwin

Dancyger, Ken. 1995. Alternative Scriptwriting/Ken Dancyger and Jeff Rush. Boston: Focal Press

McKee, Robert. 1999. Story — Substance, Structure and Style and the Principles of Screenwriting. London: Methuen

Seger, Linda. 1994. Making a Good Script Great. Hollywood, Calf.: Samuel French Trade.

1992. The Art of Adaptation: Turning Fact and Fiction into Film. New York: Henry Holt & Co

Other Details

Offered in: 2010, 2009
Current Campus: City campus
Levels: Postgraduate
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