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Unit of Study LAWS2067 - Crossing the Line: Law and Morality in Fiction (2022)

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Unit Snapshot

Unit description

Introduces students to fictional explorations of shades of morality, the complexity of human motivation and situations where morality and the law conflict. Students will practice writing craft and write their own short story about a character facing a moral quandary with legal implications.

Unit content

Topic 1: Building complex, multi-faceted characters. Contradictory aspects of character, layers of motivation. Character desire and how it drives plot.

Topic 2: Building tension with scene and dialogue. How to convey the character’s inner world through scene and framing of moral dilemmas.

Topic 3: Point of view and narrative distance. Who’s narrating the story and how does that choice affect the story and reader?

Topic 4: Plot, rising action and framing a short story which encapsulates a moral quandary. 

Availabilities

Not currently available in 2022

Learning outcomes

Unit Learning Outcomes express learning achievement in terms of what a student should know, understand and be able to do on completion of a unit. These outcomes are aligned with the graduate attributes. The unit learning outcomes and graduate attributes are also the basis of evaluating prior learning.

On completion of this unit, students should be able to:

demonstrate understanding of how to build a complex character using reflection, exposition, scene, and dialogue

demonstrate understanding of the difference between scene and summary

show ability to write with both a remote and close narrative distance

demonstrate ability to write rising action and a compelling moral quandary