Aims of the course:
- To provide students with an overview of crime fiction from the first detective story written by Edgar Allan Poe to recent acclaimed thrillers.
- To introduce students to central techniques of writing crime fiction.
- To encourage students to make their own experiments with the form.
Course content overview:
Crime fiction recently overtook general and literary fiction for the first time as the UK's biggest-selling novel genre.
While crime fiction makes use of universal story structures and archetypes, this broad literary tradition has its own conventions and narrative strategies.
The aim of this online course is to introduce students to the craft of crime fiction, including inter alia: detective stories, psychological/spy thrillers, and mystery/suspense novels.
Each week we will examine a different writing technique: plot, characterisation, narrative point-of-view, dialogue, and novel-openings & endings.
Emphasis will be placed on (i) craft discussions, (ii) close reading of crime novel extracts, and (iii) writing prompts and exercises.
Schedule (this course is completed entirely online):
Orientation Week: 27 May - 2 June 2019
Teaching Weeks: 3 June - 7 July 2019
Feedback Week: 8 - 14 July 2019
Each week of an online course is roughly equivalent to 2-3 hours of classroom time. On top of this, participants should expect to spend roughly 2-3 hours reading material, etc., although this will vary from person to person.
While they have a specific start and end date and will follow a weekly schedule (for example, week 1 will cover topic A, week 2 will cover topic B), our tutor-led online courses are designed to be flexible and as such would normally not require participants to be online for a specific day of the week or time of the day (although some tutors may try to schedule times where participants can be online together for web seminars, which will be recorded so that those who are unable to be online at certain times are able to access material).
Unless otherwise stated, all course material will be posted on the Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) so that they can be accessed at any time throughout the duration of the course and interaction with your tutor and fellow participants will take place through a variety of different ways which will allow for both synchronous and asynchronous learning (discussion boards,etc).
A Certificate of Participation will be awarded to participants who contribute constructively to weekly discussions and exercises/assignments for the duration of the course.
