UAL LEVEL 3 EXTENDED DIPLOMA JOURNALISM AND CREATIVE

UAL LEVEL 3 EXTENDED DIPLOMA: JOURNALISM AND CREATIVE WRITING WELCOME

To develop an early understanding of the course and its requirements. Begin to Explore vocational routes and skills LEARNING OBJECTIVES: Discuss and examine the main ingredients/reasons of why someone writes. To begin thinking about the essential parts of a story and in particular character. Why I write: to look at why other writers write and understand their motives plus explore your own.

INTRODUCTION TO COURSE • What do you want from the course? Discuss and write answers in your note book, on your PC, on your laptop… • Project 1: Weekly skills session leads to a portfolio of your best and favourite work. (up to Christmas) • Project 2: new project: Promoting and Selling Yourself through audio, visual and interactive platforms (Jane to March 2021). • Final Major Project: An Extended project (your exam) that brings together all the skills and knowledge for you to further experiment and develop your favourite work, analysing and explaining how published/industry work has impacted on you and reflecting on the aims, the development and outcomes of the project. March to June

GET SET UP ON WORDPRESS • https: //wordpress. com/ • My blog post address where I will upload weekly sessions: https: //wordpress. com/stats/day/creativewritingandjournalismstaff. wordpress. com • This weeks blog post: https: //wordpress. com/post/creativewritingandjournalismstaff. wordpress. com/2317 • Please read after the sessions to make sure you are up to date…

BLOGGING • What we all expect from each other AS WRITERS and what we need from each other as writers? • BLOGGING AND BLOGS/WORDPRESS – WEEKLY RECORD OF THE WORK: analyse, reflect, evaluate as you go. - • All work needs to go through TEAMS now – getting set up on Teams • How to use your journal/blog: WHAT WE DID, HOW WE DID IT AND WHY WE DID IT? The impact of the sessions on you as a writer. • BE CREATIVE! AD MULTI-MEDIA EXAMPLES ETC – always show your journey as a writer in detail from the germ of an idea through all the crafting to the drafting… • PLUS ANALYSIS OF INDUSTRY/PUBLISHED EXAMPLES THAT IMPACT ON YOUR WORK. How has it impacted on your writing and your ideas as a writer, a storyteller and student of writing.

DISCUSSIONS • DISCUSSION 1 • Careers for writers – as a way of introducing the course and what we will cover: DISCUSS EMPLOYABILITY/LIFE SKILLS, TRANSFERABLE SKILLS, HOW TO SELL/MARKET YOURSELF ETC (project 2). • https: //www. prospects. ac. uk/careers-advice/what-can-i-do-with-my-degree/creativewriting

SKILLS FOR YOUR CV As well as acquiring specialist knowledge of creative writing, you'll have developed effective written and oral communication skills. Other strengths you can evidence include: • creative thinking and problem solving - these skills are useful for many jobs and you'll have gained them from developing characters and storylines • independent working - having to be self-motivated as a writer means you can effectively determine and direct your own workload • time management and organisation - learning to structure your time effectively as a writer means you can be highly organised • a good understanding of information technology • planning and researching written work - you'll be adept at this from turning ideas into well-rounded stories • presentation skills • editorial and proofreading skills - key skills gained from producing accurately written content • negotiation skills - learning how to market your work effectively gives you the skill to negotiate in other workplace settings.

DISCUSSION 2: USEFUL RESOURCES FOR THE COURSE • NEW WRITING SOUTH & BBC WRITERS ROOM • WRITERS MAGAZINES on line competitions and submissions. • Short Stops: https: //shortstops. info/ • Online blogs and writer’s tips ON ALL ASPECTS OF CRAFTING. • Writers write about their writing e. g. Stephen King On Writing • LRC: We have a section for creative writing and journalism.

WHAT IS WRITING? • HOW DO WE WRITE: the mechanics, and nuts and bolts of writing. • What are the most important components and how does this help affect the reader? • How do we plant images in our readers mind? • This should be an on-going aspect of your development and crafting. • Lets discuss and see what we will be learning.

WHAT IS A STORY? • The Power of Story by Anna Davis • Stories hold a special power – a magic – for both the writer/storyteller and for the reader/listener. Is there anything else that can do what stories do? Music perhaps – but music does it differently. You’ll find stories operating in every culture all over the world, and in every moment of our history. From tales told around the campfire, to novels, theatre, movies and now the epic TV serial … Even those little videos you come across on social media where someone is filmed rescuing a cat from a tree or surprising a wonderful teacher with a big thank you gift – and they slap some adverts in the middle, figuring you’ll want to hang on to watch the happy ending – yes, that’s a story.

Stories let you lose yourself and find yourself. They let you look out through another person’s eyes. They thrill you, amuse you, enchant you, move you. They let you explore other worlds and give you new perspectives on your own. They take you on a journey – emotionally, intellectually, imaginatively. They hold you – on that journey – so that you don’t want to let go. And that journey is unique to you – even as it also joins you with others and flows down the years and across the world.

Stories hold a special power – a magic – for both the writer/storyteller and for the reader/listener. Is there anything else that can do what stories do? Music perhaps – but music does it differently. You’ll find stories operating in every culture all over the world, and in every moment of our history. From tales told around the campfire, to novels, theatre, movies and now the epic TV serial … Even those little videos you come across on social media where someone is filmed rescuing a cat from a tree or surprising a wonderful teacher with a big thank you gift – and they slap some adverts in the middle, figuring you’ll want to hang on to watch the happy ending – yes, that’s a story.

WHAT IS STORY? There are lots of different ideas out there about what story is, at its essence. Here’s my take on it: A story introduces a character (or more than one character) – and shows something happen, which causes change. I know that sounds bland, but I really do think that is it, in its most basic terms. The thing that happens can be incredibly subtle – so that you can almost feel nothing has changed at all. Almost … I am often entranced by beautifully subtle short stories, which draw you in and then just turn very gently – allowing you to understand something that wasn’t initially obvious, delivered through an elegant sleight-of-hand. Or, at the other extreme, you might be instantly hooked by a crime novel that opens with a murder and takes you on a suspense-filled ride in the company of the detective-protagonist, across hundreds of pages, playing with your expectations, leading you down blind alleys and finally showing you the truth – perhaps with a killer twist along the way.

The character journey or arc Stories usually follow the journey or arc of the central character – showing how that character changes through the events of the story. This could happen through overcoming the forces of opposition, going on a quest or solving a mystery. It’s worth noting that a reader is likely to engage with a central character more – and like them more – when that character is active or dynamic, rather than passive – i. e. , we usually like it when characters make things happen rather than just reacting to what happens around them

CHARACTERS • Characters are like the seeds and the story is the tree that grows from this seed. The light that comes through the canopy enables things to grow around beneath. Jean Arp

WRITING EXERCISE I’m going to give you some opening scenarios to choose from. Select whichever one feels most interesting to you and see if you can develop it into a story, or at least the first bit of a story. You might like to use ‘what if’ questions to play with different directions for your story before you start writing – or maybe you’ll just want to launch straight in and feel your way forward. It’s entirely up to you. Here are your opening scenarios: 1. A man in a denim jacket sits on a park bench, chuckling to himself. 2. A blonde woman is crawling around in a car park, searching for something. 3. A teenage girl stands alone in a small back garden in the dark, staring up at the house. 4. All down the street, people are opening their doors and windows to applaud and to listen to the applause ringing out around them – all except one. Choose just one of those scenarios – or if you don’t like any of them, come up with one of your own instead – and see if you can develop a storyline from it. Ask yourself who this character is, what’s going on for them, why they’re doing what they’re doing – what is going to happen next … And you might soon find you have a story. Then have a go at writing it …

LIFE WRITING OR PENNED PORTRAITS – GETTING TO KNOW ME AND YOU • Getting to know each other. Treat the session like a life drawing session, but instead of drawing me you will write about me and then about one other student. • Introduction to me • Before I tell the students about me • Life drawing exercise: Write about me. • Feedback & The truth • Try this with other people in the class: BE NICE! • Feedback – follow same process. • Write down what others might and have said about you: agree and or disagree • TRY WRITING A SHORT FICTIONAL OR JOURNAILSTIC PIECE USING THE INFORMATION YOU HAVE NOTED DOWN.

WHY WRITERS WRITE? • Question and answer session: Share opinions and feelings • Why do you write and why do you think other writers write? What do they hope to achieve with their writing? • E. B. White said, “All that I hope to say in books, all that I ever hope to say, is that I love the world. ” • What do you hope to say through your writing? • Researching other writers as a way of writing your own version of Why I Write

WHY I WRITE Why I write by Joan Didiot: http: //theessayexperiencefall 2013. qwriting. qc. cuny. edu/files/20 13/08/%E 2%80%9 CWhy-I-Write%E 2%80%9 D-by-Joan. Didion. pdf Why I write by George Orwell: https: //www. orwell. ru/library/essays/wiw/english/e_wiw • http: //goinswriter. com/why-i-write/

ANAIS NIN WHY I WRITE • https: //www. youtube. com/watch? v=Y-d. Rf 7 Zxf 8 Q

WHY I WRITE- CECILIA KNAPP https: //www. youtube. com/watch? v=g. J 63 Vv 6 e. Oew

WHY I WRITE • https: //vimeo. com/121183033

WHY DO WRITERS WRITE? • To End Loneliness Why do I write? It's not that I want people to think I am smart, or even that I am a good writer. I write because I want to end my loneliness. Books make people less alone. That, before and after everything else, is what books do. They show us that conversations are possible across distances. ' (Jonathan Safran Foer, quoted by Deborah Solomon in "The Rescue Artist. " The New York Times, February 27, 2005) • To Have Fun I write basically because it's so much fun--even though I can't see. When I'm not writing, as my wife knows, I'm miserable. (James Thurber, interviewed by George Plimpton and Max Steele, 1955. The Paris Review Interviews, Vol. II, ed. by Philip Gourevitch. Picador, 2007)

WHY DO WRITERS WRITE? • To Keep a Hold on Life We do not write because we must; we always have choice. We write because language is the way we keep a hold on life. (bell hooks [Gloria Watkins], Remembered Rapture: The Writer at Work. Henry Holt and Co. , 1999) • To Unload [Y]ou get a great deal off your chest--emotions, impressions, opinions. Curiosity urges you on--the driving force. What is collected must be got rid of. (John Dos Passos. The Paris Review Interviews, Vol. IV, ed. by George Plimpton. Viking, 1976) • To Leave a Legacy It is the deepest desire of every writer, the one we never admit or even dare to speak of: to write a book we can leave as a legacy. . If you do it right, and if they publish it, you may actually leave something behind that can last forever. (Alice Hoffman, "The Book That Wouldn't Die: A Writer's Last and Longest Voyage. " The New York Times, July 22, 1990

WHY DO WRITERS WRITE? • To Evoke the Past and the Present Nothing ever seems to me quite real at the moment it happens. It's part of the reason for writing, since the experience never seems quite real until I evoke it again. That's all one tries to do in writing, really, to hold something--the past, the present. (Gore Vidal, interviewed by Bob Stanton in Views from a Window: Conversations With Gore Vidal. Lyle Stuart, 1980)

WHY DO WRITERS WRITE? • The question we writers are asked most often, the favorite question, is: Why do you write? I write because I have an innate need to write. I write because I can't do normal work as other people do. I write because I want to read books like the ones I write because I am angry at everyone. I write because I love sitting in a room all day writing. I write because I can partake of real life only by changing it. . (Orhan Pamuk, "My Father's Suitcase" [Nobel Prize acceptance speech, December 2006]. Other Colors: Essays and a Story, translated from the Turkish by Maureen Freely. Vintage Canada, 2008) • To Learn Something I write because I want to find something out. I write in order to learn something that I didn't know before I wrote it. (Laurel Richardson, Fields of Play: Constructing an Academic Life. Rutgers University Press, 1997) • To Think More Coherently I write because I enjoy expressing myself, and writing forces me to think more coherently than I do when just shooting off my mouth. (William Safire, William Safire On Language. Times Books, 1980)

WHY DO WRITERS WRITE? • To Keep From Going Crazy I write because it's the only thing I'm really very good at in the whole world. And I've got to stay busy to stay out of trouble, to keep from going crazy, dying of depression. So I continue to do the one thing in the world that I feel very good at. I get an enormous amount of pleasure out of it. (Reynolds Price, quoted by S. D. Williams in "Reynolds Price on the South, Literature, and Himself. " Conversations With Reynolds Price, ed. by Jefferson Humphries. University Press of Mississippi, 1991) • To Make a Home One writes to make a home for oneself, on paper, in time, in others' minds. (Alfred Kazin, "The Self As History. " Telling Lives, ed. by Marc Pachter. New Republic Books, 1979)

WHY DO WRITERS WRITE? • To Discover, to Uncover. . . I write to make peace with the things I cannot control. I write to create red in a world that often appears black and white. I write to discover. I write to uncover. I write to meet my ghosts. I write to begin a dialogue. I write to imagine things differently and in imagining things differently perhaps the world will change. I write to honour beauty. I write to correspond with my friends. I write as a daily act of improvisation. I write because it creates my composure. I write against power and for democracy. I write myself out of my nightmares and into my dreams. . (Terry Tempest Williams, "A Letter to Deb Clow. " Red: Passion and Patience in the Desert. Pantheon Books, 2001)

WHY YOU WRITE? • Now it's your turn. Regardless of what you write: fiction or nonfiction, poetry or prose, letters or journal entries; see if you can explain Why You Write.

USING IMAGES AS STORY PROMPTS • http: //simplewriting. org/ho w-to-use-photo-promptsfor-writing/ This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY-SA-NC

USING IMAGES AS STORY PROMPTS • Quick Write Steps: • Study the image/photo/postcard • Think about how the picture inspires you as a writer • First denote: describe in detail what is actually in the picture/image/photograph • 2 nd connote/meanings and inferences in images/what the images suggest • Write your thoughts • Share your writing with others • Then finally write the beginnings of a character study and/or short story?

CRAFTING! - LEARNING FROM THE WRITERS WE LOVE • Find a favourite writer and analyse the style of writing: how they achieve the effect they are looking for, word choice, literary devices such as metaphor, simile, show and not tell the impact the opening has to the story, the structure of sentences and the overall piece of writing, character/human interest descriptions, POV and tense etc. • Grab a really good book from your shelves and take a look at the first few paragraphs. Try to analyse what the writer does to create the world of their story right from the off – reading as a writer (this is something I bang on about a lot, but you can learn so much by reading and by paying close attention to what authors do).

REFLECTION/EVALUATION OF SESSIONS • Finally, look back at week one’s sessions and evaluate how you feel the sessions have gone for you personally. • Use these questions to guide you: • What did we learn? . • How did we do it? The exercises, the reading, the discussion the sharing etc • Why did we do it? • What do you need to develop further and what have you mastered and understanding of? How will this session impact on your writing? • Use these questions every week to critique/comment/evaluate the weekly sessions