Module C: The Craft of Writing
What this module asks
Module C assesses your ability to compose deliberately and to reflect on your choices. You study how professional writers make decisions, then make comparable decisions in your own work across forms: narrative, persuasive, discursive, reflective and persuasive-imaginative hybrids.
Concepts you must command
- Form and audience: register, structure, pacing, paragraphing.
- Voice and persona: first-person reliability, tone, idiolect.
- Imagery and figurative language used purposefully, not ornamentally.
- Syntax as rhythm: sentence length, fragments, cumulative sentences.
- Editing and revision: drafting, cutting, reordering for effect.
- Reflection on craft: articulating intention, choice and effect.
Traps in questions
- Ignoring the stimulus or stipulated form. If asked for a discursive piece, do not deliver a short story.
- Purple prose. Elaborate vocabulary without control weakens clarity.
- Reflection that summarises. Reflection must analyse choices, not narrate what you wrote.
- Neglecting audience and purpose in the opening lines.
- Unfinished endings caused by poor time allocation.
Rule of thumb
Use the intention–choice–effect formula in reflection: 'I wanted to convey X, so I chose Y, which achieves Z for the reader.' Worked example: to convey a child's disorientation, I used present tense and clipped sentences, which quickens pace and denies the reader retrospective comfort.
Practical habit
Draft a short piece weekly in a stipulated form, then write 100 words of craft reflection. Plan endings before drafting so structure is controlled.