Serial Storytelling (CWRI40017)

HonoursPoints: 12.5Not available in 2025

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Overview

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Students will read a range of fictional and non-fictional narratives written in the late 20th and early 21 st centuries for serial publication, such as Maupin’s Tales of the City books or ABC’s Please Like Me. Students will analyse these texts with a focus on the relationship between serial distribution and storytelling form, and with particular attention given to historical transformations and new developments.

Students will also read critical approaches to serial narrative concentrating on textual forms, genre, criticism, technologies of production and distribution, industrial formations of production and distribution, cultural contexts, and modes of audience engagement. Students will work to devise a concept outline for an original serial narrative for print, online, audio or screen delivery (e.g. online prose series, television series or podcast series), and write selected instalments.

 

Intended learning outcomes

Students who successfully complete this subject should be able to: 

  • Develop a serialised story concept, including devising the long-form concept, pitching the work, workshopping, drafting and structuring, and the preparation of selected instalments.
  • Compare serial storytelling formations for various media and in different historical circumstances, with appropriate complexity and nuance.
  • Evaluate serialised stories in various media within a broader context and in light of the concepts, conditions and history that underpin the development of serial storytelling.
  • Analyse and give constructive feedback on story concepts and drafts for long-form stories in a range of media, taking into account individual and cultural differences, and informed by ethical values and intellectual honesty.
  • Explicate and/or effectively use the mechanics of serialised storytelling, including segmentation, story arcs, multilinear stories and character development.
  • Articulate realistic possible industrial and creative contexts for their own long-form stories, in light of the vocational possibilities related to serialised storytelling.

Generic skills

Students who successfully complete this subject will be able to:

  • Analyse and evaluate a variety of texts
  • Participate in discussion and group activities and increase their creative and critical skills through workshopping and collaboration
  • Independently devise and articulate a creative work in both verbal and written modes
  • Conceptualise, prepare and present their creative projects at an advanced level.

Last updated: 4 March 2025