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Imagine This: Prompts for Creative Writing

Module description

This module will ask you for a creative writing response to whatever ‘prompt’ is suggested – whether it’s a newspaper headline, the Ted Hughes archive in The Old Library, or a geographical feature. It will invigorate your entrepreneurial spirit, and will include expressions written in both poetry, prose and dramatic forms. Working across a wide range of writing styles and genres, you will make literature that works for the ear and the body and the page. The assessment will be entirely creative, and in that sense the module complements the other term-2 compulsory module on the Combined Honours English and Creative Writing degree programme, ‘Critical Reflections’, for which the assessment will be wholly critical/academic.

Module aims - intentions of the module

This module has a clear set of learning strategies, offering you a series of stepping stones that navigate the creative process in different forms. You will develop learning strategies that will encourage self-starting intelligence and invention, an entrepreneurial spirit. It will explore the notion of the ‘good idea’ and its relationship with form – whether poetry, prose, or dramatic expression, as well as strategies for successful drafting/rewriting. The overall intention of the module is for you to develop an individual creative process that might be carried forward into a writing life. 

Intended Learning Outcomes (ILOs)

ILO: Module-specific skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 1. Demonstrate an informed appreciation of a range of forms of creative writing
• 2. Demonstrate an understanding of the appeals of creative writing to readers/audiences, and to the shaping effects of authorship and authorial intention
• 3. Demonstrate a capacity to produce creative writing in a range of distinctive styles and genres, in a manner informed by your innovative responses to the various prompts

ILO: Discipline-specific skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 4. Demonstrate an ability to play with formal techniques and imaginative expression in different forms of creative writing
• 5. Present persuasive oral arguments concerning your own creative decisions with reference to the work of other creative practitioners.
• 6. Articulate a broad range of appropriate critical and professional terminology

ILO: Personal and key skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 7. Through seminar work, demonstrate advanced communication skills, and an ability to work both individually and in groups
• 8. Through writing varied pieces of creative work, demonstrate appropriate research and bibliographic skills, an advanced capacity to construct a coherent, substantiated argument for a ‘good idea’, advanced skills of creative expression, and a capacity to write clear and correct prose
• 9. Through research for various creative pieces, demonstrate advanced proficiency in information retrieval, analysis and synthesis

Syllabus plan

Each week a ‘prompt’ will be offered as a starting point from which students will conceive a weekly research and writing project in either prose, poetry or dramatic form. Such prompts might be: a crime from a newspaper story; a political movement such as Black Lives Matter or MeToo; an emotion such as love or excitement, a geographical feature. The weekly writing projects will be workshopped in the seminar groups and strategies decided for re-writing.

Learning activities and teaching methods (given in hours of study time)

Details of learning activities and teaching methods

Formative assessment

Summative assessment (% of credit)

Details of summative assessment

Details of re-assessment (where required by referral or deferral)

Re-assessment notes

Deferral – if you miss an assessment for certificated reasons judged acceptable by the Mitigation Committee, you will normally be either deferred in the assessment or an extension may be granted. The mark given for a re-assessment taken as a result of deferral will not be capped and will be treated as it would be if it were your first attempt at the assessment.

Referral – if you have failed the module overall (i.e. a final overall module mark of less than 40%) you will be required to submit a further assessment as necessary. If you are successful on referral, your overall module mark will be capped at 40%.

Indicative learning resources - Basic reading

• I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Maya Angelou
• In Cold Blood, Truman Capote
• Connections 500 by various playwrights

Indicative learning resources - Web based and electronic resources

• ELE: https://vle.exeter.ac.uk/course/view.php?id=8553

Key words search

Creative Writing, English