Contemporary Writing 2: Genre

• Credit value: 30 credits at Level 7
• Assessment: a 4000-word essay (100%)

Whatever your voice or thematic preoccupation, it’s almost certain that you will have to place your characters within a compelling story if they are to engage the reader from the first page to the last. Easier said than done, perhaps. Conflict, passion, risk and uncertainty are the powerful forces at work in the world of your characters, but how can you channel these into an effective plot that provokes the reader into turning the pages?

There are few better ways of exploring these issues than looking at what is often labelled 'genre fiction'. Dealing predominantly with matters of plot and narrative, this module will focus as much on the underlying and archetypal structures that genre stories seem to share as on the features that distinguish one genre from another.

We will place a special emphasis on the 'Detective Story' as a key to understanding the process of investigation that seems to organise the events that comprise most genre plots, be they heist narratives, spy intrigues, sci-fi dramas or supernatural thrillers. We will also examine certain techniques used by feature film screenwriters for 'plotting' stories with strong narrative momentum and assess their utility for the writing of prose fiction of all kinds.

Hopefully, the content of the course will be of benefit to those writers looking to work explicitly within certain genres but also to those looking to hybridise genres or understand more generally the process of designing a compelling plot.

By the end of this module, you will have:

• a broad understanding of the textual strategies underlying a range of genres that dominate contemporary storytelling
• an advanced understanding of the principles of plot structure.