Students must listen to lectures and attend tutorials. Some of the lectures this semester may be delivered in audio format only (rather than face to face). Please check the lecture schedule each week before the scheduled lecture time to keep up-to-date with any changes. 

As part of your participation in the course, you will be asked to complete three writing exercises and  three sections of draft material from your  Narrative Journalism Article, as well as the lead of your Sydney Writers' Festival article and bring them to class for workshopping. Failure to bring to class any or all of the exercises or draft material will result in a lower participation mark. The participation mark is based on your contribution to discussion in class, and your contribution to the editing of other students' work.

Writing Exercises - Drafts: Bring 5 copies of each completed draft exercise to your tutorials in weeks 2, 3 and 4 as specified in the unit outline.

Narrative Journalism Article Drafts: Bring 5 copies of 1 x 200-word draft section of your final article to your tutorials in weeks 8, 9 and 10. Each week, bring along a different draft section.

Sydney Writers' Festival Article Draft: Bring 5 copies of the first 200 words of your article to class in week 12 for workshopping.

Writing Exercises

Due Date: Week 5, Friday 27 March, 5pm.

Weight: 15%

Task: To workshop 3 writing exercises in class. These should then be submitted online together as ONE assignment on Friday 27 March, 5pm.

The 3 Writing Exercises have been designed to:

• sharpen students' writing skills appropriate to the aims of the unit
• provide students with feedback early in the unit on their progress
• identify early in the unit areas where students may need extra help or encouragement with their creative work

Writing Exercise 1:  (Bring to tutorial in Week 2) Pick 10 people you know and write a one-sentence description of each of them, focussing on what makes each person unique and noteworthy. 

Writing Exercise 2: (Bring to tutorial in Week 3) Pick a smell or aroma - eg, the smell of garlic or rose petals or a wet dog... - and recreate in 200 interesting words a memory associated with that smell. Avoid using any adverbs or adjectives. Instead, use strong verbs.

Writing Exercise 3: (Due Tutorial Week 4) Visualise a place. Be there, see the details. Now write about it as if you love this place, but without telling the reader directly that you really like being there (150 words). It could be a corner of your bedroom, an old tree you sit under on Saturday afternoons, a table at McDonalds, a place near the ocean. What colours are there? Sounds? Smells? When someone else reads it, she should know what it is like to be there and understand how you feel about it. Now, do the same thing but write about the SAME place as if you really hate it. Again, don’t tell the reader directly how you feel but use your description of the place, and the tone of your writing, to convey your feelings (150 words).
 

(Exercises 1 and 3 adapted from http://poewar.com/fifteen-craft-exercises-for-writers/)

Research Portfolio
Due Date: Week 8, Friday 11 April, 5pm
Weight: 25%
Students will submit a research portfolio and report based on original research they have conducted towards their narrative journalism article. Research will take the form of fieldwork, interviews and/or archival research. 

Narrative Journalism Article
Due Date: Week 11, Monday 22 May, 10am 
Weight: 25%
Task: Submit a 1200-word original article based on research conducted for your research portfolio (as well as subsequent research).

The topic is of your choice (under the guidance of your tutor). 

When writing your article, make sure you tell an interesting story that has a point. Your piece should include facts and information, anecdote, observation, and description and possibly quotes and/or dialogue. Remember to "show, not tell". Use concrete details. Write for the senses. Feel free to write passionately and to take risks with your content and expression. You may build on any of the exercises done in class to write your story.  Work into the story any relevant insights gained from writing the reflection (see next par).

Append to the story a 500-word reflection on the process of writing the story. Consider:

• Why you chose this particular story/topic. Why is it important to you?
• What issues you faced in researching the story and in converting the research into a narrative.
• Whether you found it confronting to write - and if so, how you moved through that stage to complete the piece;
• Whether you faced ethical issues in the writing (what were these? how did they affect your approach? how did you ultimately resolve them?).
• Whether the types of literary techniques you used were well chosen and worked the way you wanted them to (e.g. dialogue, a seductive
• opening/lead; observation and description, anecdotes, structure, etc).
• What you learned from using those techniques.
• What you learned from writing this piece. Why do you think it helped you to learn this/these thing/s?
• Other comments you would like to make.

SWF Report
Due Date: Week 12, Friday 5 June, 5pm
Weight: 25%

The purpose of this assignment is two-fold - to encourage participation in the Sydney Writer's Festival and to give students practice in getting to the nub of a factual story quickly and in few words.

Students are required to attend the Sydney Writers' Festival and write an article about one seminar that they attended. The article should be 600 words long. It should give the reader enough information to get a solid impression of the content of the seminar. It should be written with an interesting lead and the article should answer all the reader's questions regarding the who, what, when, where and why of the seminar.