Dramatic Writing BWR100

Course Structure: Dramatic Writing BWR100

1. Introduction

• Motivation
• Typing Time
• Types of Writing : Reflection, Exposition, Description, Explanation, Argument
• Making Decisions about what to Write
• Know your stuff
• The concept
• Synopsis
• Keeping a Notebook
• Process of Story Development
• Planning a Story
• Developing your Voice
• Useful terms

   2. Characters

• Developing the characters
• Building Characters
• Main Characters
• Minor Characters

   3. Theme & Genre

• Developing a Theme
• Universal Themes
• Sub Themes
• Creating Conflict
• Names

   4. Plot Development

• First Decisions
• Ambience
• The End of a Story
• Types of Dramatic Story: Memoirs, Biographies, Reflective Stories, Historical etc

   5. Weaving a Story

• Techniques: Action, Emotion, Mirror; Parallel lives, Palm Cards
• Writers Block
• Developing a Story Line
• Things to Avoid
• Different Approaches: Dialectic, Transition
• How a Character Affects a Plot
• How Plot Affects Genre
• Goals
• Consequences
• Motive
• Flashbacks and Flashforwards

   6. Writing a Dramatic Short Story

• Main Character and Antagonist
• Creating a Sense of Place
• Counting Out Your Story
• Short Stories

   7. Developing Sub Plots

• Method
• Plants
• Activity

   8. Writing a Chapters for a Dramatic Work (Novel or Play)

• Getting Published
• Writing Resources
• Writing as a Business
• Vanity Publishing
• Dealing with Publishers
• Creating a Chapter or Segment of a larger work

Aims: Dramatic Writing BWR100

• Define and develop an understanding of dramatic writing.
• Develop methods of developing characters in dramatic writing.
• Define different genres and develop themes for dramatic writing.
• Develop techniques for developing your plot.
• Describe techniques for weaving a story.
• Develop a short story using dramatic writing.
• Develop a chapter of dramatic writing.
• Determine how to develop sub plots.

What you will be doing during this Course

• Reflection: An internal process of reviewing and making meaning from one's own experience;

• Exposition or Reporting: Covers a wide area of writing. Events, thoughts and situations are exposed or shown to the reader, as in textbooks, magazine articles or news stories, but also when the narrator or a character takes an informing role. One very important form of reporting or exposition for writers is description.

• Description: The reporting of information to convey an impression or feeling about a place, person, thing or idea, rather than facts. Description can be a small part of a particular narrative, or the main part of it. A lot of good travel writing is descriptive, as is a lot of fiction. Consider the heavy overlapping of description and exposition in this description of a circus performer by E.B. White (not in one of her novels, but in a newspaper article):
  
  • The richness of the scene was in its plainness, its natural condition - of horse, of ring, of girl, even to the girl's bare feet that gripped the bare back of her proud and ridiculous mount. The enchantment grew not out of anything that happened … but out of something that seemed to go round and round with the girl, attending her, a steady gleam in the shape of a circle …

• Explanation: A process of leading another person to a particular understanding or perception through information and reason, rather than through persuasive language. It includes instruction, rules and guidelines, argument and analysis.
• Argument: Aims to persuade the reader to change their viewpoint or attitude about an idea or situation. It is often quite rhetorical in nature. [Rhetoric is the art of persuading through emotion, but using elements of logic or reason (often quite illogically)]. Most political speeches are rhetorical in nature. Argument typically presents two points of view; then builds a case for one of them, and either refutes or overwhelms the other.

Each lesson culminates in an assignment which is submitted to the Academy, marked by the Academy's tutors and returned to you with any relevant suggestions, comments, and if necessary, extra reading.