CAES2003
Story Writing for Audiovisual Books
This course is for you if you want to
learn to write short stories
analyse storylines of movies & novels
create your FIRST audiovisual book
Course Description
Students will improve their written, spoken and digital literacy skills through the genre of audio-visual books. They will engage in the analysis of novels that have been reproduced as audio-visual books and movies with respect to their plot structures and linguistic features, and come to understand the importance of this digital genre in the modern world. They will also be guided to write a short story employing similar plot structures and linguistic features, and produce an audio-visual book. In this process, students will be introduced to a range of grammatical structures and vocabulary commonly used in story writing, and the skills of varying one’s pace, stress and intonation for voice narration and voice acting. They will also learn digital skills such as audio and video capture, audio and video editing, selection of audios and videos, and integrating multimedia. The audio-visual books that students produce will be read by secondary school students in Hong Kong. Their written stories will also be published on www.writerscafe.org, which is an international community supporting literary writing.
This course will take a blended learning approach in that some face-to-face sessions are replaced by online activities including the viewing of video lectures.
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Novels to be analysed in the course
(You will only have to read ONE of these novels in the form of an audiovisual book.)
Ivan Turgenev's First Love
Celeste Ng's Everything I Never Told You
Amy Tintera's Reboot
Learning Outcomes
Produce an audio-visual book that is appealing to its target audience
Analyse audio-visual books to understand their plot structures and linguistic features typical of fiction writing
Improve written communication skills by learning the linguistic style of fiction writing
Improve spoken communication skills through oral presentations and voice narration of an audio-visual book
FAQ
Do I have to be very imaginative?
No, you don't have to. The course instructor will guide you through creating your own story. You will learn how to get inspirations for writing through your daily observations. You will also develop creativity through a number of interesting interactive tasks in class. You will become more creative by the end of the course!
How will I learn in this course?
Putting excerpts from novels into sequence to create logical stories
Building a collection of sounds, objects, persons, feelings, dreams, photos, news stories, or conversations you overhear for writing your own story
Understanding plot structure
Using simile and metaphor in fiction writing
Using vocabulary to describe emotions and actions
Writing dialogues
Using different sentence types
Varying pace, stress and intonation in speech
Using audio and video capture and editing techniques
Integrating text, visuals, music and sound effects into video
Do I need to have story writing experience?
No, you don't. Your instructor will show you the language you can use in fiction writing, and give you feedback on a draft of your writing.
Meet your Course Instructor
Louisa Chan
Lecturer, Centre for Applied English Studies, HKU
Louisa has taught academic and professional English to undergraduates and postgraduates from Hong Kong, China and Japan, and also workplace English to administrative and support staff of the University. She has developed a range of discipline-specific courses and co-authored an academic English textbook. She is currently offering an elective course that integrates online and face-to-face components aimed at promoting reading of audiovisual books/novels and writing of short stories. She enjoys reading novels, singing, playing the piano and the guitar, and writing poems. Her poems are published on www.writerscafe.org.