School: Arts and Humanities

This unit information may be updated and amended immediately prior to semester. To ensure you have the correct outline, please check it again at the beginning of semester.

  • Unit Title

    Writing Fiction that Scares and Unsettles
  • Unit Code

    WRT6435
  • Year

    2025
  • Enrolment Period

    1
  • Version

    1
  • Credit Points

    20
  • Full Year Unit

    N
  • Mode of Delivery

    Online
  • Unit Coordinator

    Dr Aksel DADSWELL

Description

Fear is fundamental to the human experience and scary stories take us back to our origins. This unit explores the darker aspects of fiction including genres such as horror and gothic, as well as thematic concerns like violence, trauma and conflict. It introduces the sublime, which examines our reaction to forces beyond our understanding in form, scale and time.

Non Standard Timetable Requirements

Students undertake this unit in an accelerated delivery mode over eight weeks.

Learning Outcomes

On completion of this unit students should be able to:

  1. Analyse elements of fear, violence, trauma and conflict in the genres of horror, gothic and weird fiction to cultivate expertise in writing the dark.
  2. Apply cognitive, technical, creative and communication skills to research and generate original written works intended to evoke terror and horror.
  3. Use high level self-management skills to select, revise and enhance their original creative texts.

Unit Content

  1. Examine the popularity of horror genres and major historic points, including themes and the ways in which trauma and violence can be used to inform narrative.
  2. Introduction to horror and terror through close study of prose and techniques for these approaches to writing.
  3. Explore the boundaries between the sublime and terror, including the various iterations of the sublime.
  4. Role of the dark as political statement and cultural critique.
  5. Explore the necessity of evil as a form of conflict in fiction, particularly in relation to light vs dark dichotomies.

Learning Experience

Students will engage in learning experiences via ECU’s LMS as well as additional ECU learning technologies

Additional Learning Experience Information

Students will learn through a combination of: - engaging, interactive, self-paced modules that include multimedia content, academic readings, as well as concept check and concept extension activities that expose students to a diversity of perspectives and approaches - collaborating with peers and tutors by participating in asynchronous discussions that support and challenge students to apply their knowledge and skills and develop deeper, more critical understandings that improve their creative writing craft

Assessment

GS1 GRADING SCHEMA 1 Used for standard coursework units

Students please note: The marks and grades received by students on assessments may be subject to further moderation. All marks and grades are to be considered provisional until endorsed by the relevant School Progression Panel.

ONLINE
TypeDescriptionValue
AssignmentFlash Fiction20%
Reflective PracticeReworking of previously submitted flash fiction with reflective component highlighting improvements, and drawing on developed skills and techniques.30%
Creative WorkDeveloped work of short fiction50%

Disability Standards for Education (Commonwealth 2005)

For the purposes of considering a request for Reasonable Adjustments under the Disability Standards for Education (Commonwealth 2005), inherent requirements for this subject are articulated in the Unit Description, Learning Outcomes and Assessment Requirements of this entry. The University is dedicated to provide support to those with special requirements. Further details on the support for students with disabilities or medical conditions can be found at the Access and Inclusion website.

Assessment

Students please note: The marks and grades received by students on assessments may be subject to further moderation. Informal vivas may be conducted as part of an assessment task, where staff require further information to confirm the learning outcomes have been met. All marks and grades are to be considered provisional until endorsed by the relevant School Progression Panel.

Academic Integrity

Integrity is a core value at Edith Cowan University, and it is expected that ECU students complete their assessment tasks honestly and with acknowledgement of other people's work as well as any generative artificial intelligence tools that may have been used. This means that assessment tasks must be completed individually (unless it is an authorised group assessment task) and any sources used must be referenced.

Breaches of academic integrity can include:

Plagiarism

Copying the words, ideas or creative works of other people or generative artificial intelligence tools, without referencing in accordance with stated University requirements. Students need to seek approval from the Unit Coordinator within the first week of study if they intend to use some of their previous work in an assessment task (self-plagiarism).

Unauthorised collaboration (collusion)

Working with other students and submitting the same or substantially similar work or portions of work when an individual submission was required. This includes students knowingly providing others with copies of their own work to use in the same or similar assessment task(s).

Contract cheating

Organising a friend, a family member, another student or an external person or organisation (e.g. through an online website) to complete or substantially edit or refine part or all of an assessment task(s) on their behalf.

Cheating in an exam

Using or having access to unauthorised materials in an exam or test.

Serious outcomes may be imposed if a student is found to have committed one of these breaches, up to and including expulsion from the University for repeated or serious acts.

ECU's policies and more information about academic integrity can be found on the student academic integrity website.

All commencing ECU students are required to complete the Academic Integrity Module.

Assessment Extension

In some circumstances, Students may apply to their Unit Coordinator to extend the due date of their Assessment Task(s) in accordance with ECU's Assessment, Examination and Moderation Procedures - for more information visit https://askus2.ecu.edu.au/s/article/000001386.

Special Consideration

Students may apply for Special Consideration in respect of a final unit grade, where their achievement was affected by Exceptional Circumstances as set out in the Assessment, Examination and Moderation Procedures - for more information visit https://askus2.ecu.edu.au/s/article/000003318.

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