Teaching Objectives and Requirements

1.To give a guideline for beginners to write good stories and make them attractive,

2.To reveal the hidden structure of story lines as well as characterization and stereotypes,

3.To promote your creativity in story-telling of entertainment and insight into its mechanism.

Teaching Requirements 

1.To come up with an idea for their stories that will stand out from other stories in movies or on TV,

2.To create the characters that will populate the story,

3.To set the plot and the tone.

  The main areas of the course involve narratology, cinema studies, and creative writing.

Teaching Contents

1.Introduction: (2 hours)

1)Course Description 2) An Introduction of Narratology

2.Unit 1: Mapping the Journey (5 hours)

1)Ordinary World 2) Call to the Journey 3)Refusal to the Call 4)Meeting with the Mentor 5) Crossing the Thresholds 6) Tests, Allies and Enemies 7) Reward and the Road Back

3.Unit 2: Characters (5 hours)

1)Hero 2) Mentor 3) Threshold Guardian 4)Herald 5) Shadow 6) Ally 7)Shapeshifter 8)Trickster

Seminar 1 (3 hours)

4.Unit 3: Intertextuality (4 hours)

1)Genre 2) Code 3)Barthe, Kristeva & Genette 4) Co-texts

5.Unit 4: Create Your Own Story! (5 hours)

1)Themes 2)Setting 3)Characters 4)Plot 5)Style

Seminar 2 (3 hours)

6.Unit 5: Rhetoric (4 hours)

1)Metaphor 2)Metonymy 3)Synecdoche 4)Symbol

Seminar 3 (3 hours)

7.Course Review (2 hours)

Text Book(s) and Reference Materials

Christopher Vogler, The Writers’Journey: Mythic Structures for Writers, Michael Wiese Productions, 2007.

Credits: 2