Literary Fiction Writing for Secondary School Students

This webinar will focus on strategies to teach high school students how to write narrative texts using a
formula for a character-driven story where the focus is more on the thoughts and feelings of the
protagonist than the plot.

Participants will analyse a character-driven story and generate a character that can be promoted to
students in their class. The idea is to support students to construct a character that can be employed
across different plots and that can be developed over their high school years in increasingly
sophisticated ways.

A range of plots such as “rags to riches”, “overcoming adversity”, “acceptance and belonging” will be
examined to determine how each participants’ “generated” character can be incorporated into a plot
type within the “literary fiction” genre.

In addition, the essential language devices used to write narratives will be reviewed. These devices will
be organised by the “job” they do within a text. The idea of using a “model” text to unpack these devices will also be explored.