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Writing Gothic and Speculative Fiction
UndergraduateGRF-CWR3122025
Course information for 2025 intake View information for 2024 course intake
Wrap yourself in genre narrative storytelling techniques. Read up on popular and contemporary examples of the Gothic genre. Identify recurring themes and characters. Create written worlds inspired by the Gothic and speculative fiction canons.
- Study method
- 100% online
- Assessments
- 100% online
- Enrol by
- 6 July 2025
- Entry requirements
- Prior study needed
- Duration
- 13 weeks
- Price from
- $2,124
- Upfront cost
- $0
- Loan available
- HECS-HELP and FEE-HELP available
Writing Gothic and Speculative Fiction
About this subject
On successful completion of this subject, you will be able to:
- recognise and understand the genres of Gothic and Speculative Fiction
- familiarise yourself with the foundational ideas relevant to these forms of narrative
- engage with fiction from the perspective of a writer through skills of close and observant reading
- analyse and discuss ideas relevant to creative writing in your own work and that of others
- exercise the creative and professional skills of writing, reading, argumentation and analysis through online discussion with your peers based on set readings (some purchased and others provided online).
- Overview of the Gothic and Speculative fiction genres
- Exploring themes and archetypes in Gothic fiction Transmedia narrative and world-building
- Dystopia and the ecological turn in Speculative Fiction
- Gothic and Speculative transformations
From its beginnings the gothic novel and its cousins, speculative and fantasy fiction, have been popular and sometimes controversial story forms that explore the outer edges of the imagination through fantasy, space, myth, the future the supernatural and the borderlands of desire. This is a realm where nothing is as it appears to be. Safe suburban homes, families, planets, cities and the human body are all vulnerable to authoritarian powers, strange beings, dark spaces, unknown territories, uncanny secrets, and the return of the repressed.
This subject offers you a chance to study and practise writing genre narrative. We will look at a selection of popular gothic and speculative fiction, past and present, by practitioners that range from Le Fanu to Bacigalupi, as a springboard for discussion and creative practice.
Â- Online Discussion (30%)
- Fiction piece (35%)
- Fiction piece (35%)
For textbook details check your university's handbook, website or learning management system (LMS).
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Entry requirements
Prior study
You must have successfully completed the following subject(s) before starting this subject:
Additional requirements
No additional requirements
Study load
- 0.125 EFTSL
- This is in the range of 10 to 12 hours of study each week.
Equivalent full time study load (EFTSL) is one way to calculate your study load. One (1.0) EFTSL is equivalent to a full-time study load for one year.
Find out more information on Commonwealth Loans to understand what this means to your eligibility for financial support.
What to study next?
Once you’ve completed this subject it can be credited towards one of the following courses
UndergraduateGRF-ART-DEG
UndergraduateGRF-COM-DEG
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