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CREATIVE WRITING - COM351 Spring 2025
Course
Anthony Marais
The aim of COM 351 is to improve your creative writing and critical thinking skills, enable you to generate writing in the future, and to impart the methodology necessary for a career as a creative writer. To accomplish this, students will receive training in practical and theoretical aspects of creative writing through lectures, critical readings and exercises, focusing on narrative fiction in four types: essays, screenplays, novels and short stories.
Here is the course outline:
1. Introduction
Feb 5
Syllabus Review, Teaching Creative Writing, Art vs. Science, Rules of Writing |
2. Aphorisms
Feb 12
Art & Creativity, The Aesthetics Schematic, Aphorisms vs. Truisms, Narrative Structure (1) |
3. Crafting Conversation
Feb 19
Word Choice, The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, Artistic Ethos, Narrative Structure (2) |
4. Memes and Archetypes
Feb 26
Pet Rocks, Memes and Archetypes |
5. Public Reading
Mar 5
The Charles Bukowski Archetype |
6. Aristotle’s Poetics (part one)
Mar 12
Concepts of Tragedy: Hamartia, Anagnorisis, Peripeteia, Catharsis |
7. Aristotle’s Poetics (part two)
Mar 19
Components of Tragedy, Elements of Plot, Qualities of Character |
8. Character Development (part one)
Apr 2
Psychology and Art, The Alchemical Process, Character Arcs, Empathy |
9. Character Development (part two)
Apr 9
The life and death of Antal Szerb |
10. Plot Structure
Apr 16
Screenplay analysis: “Psycho” by Joseph Stefano (based on the novel by Robert Bloch) |
11. Sex and Violence
Apr 23
The invisible Art: novels vs. film, Modernism, Beauty vs. Novelty, Catharsis |
12. Reviewing and Editing (part one)
Apr 30
Dalton Trumbo and the Importance of Words |
13. Reviewing and Editing (part two)
May 7
Poetry in Cinema: The Films of Albert Lewin |
14. Public Reading (part two)
May 14
Public reading of original work |