Abstract
Creative writing across the curriculum (CWAC) represents one especially meaningful college-writing experience in various settings in higher education (Nicholes “Creative Writing across the Curriculum”; Creative Writing across the Curriculum; Hanauer “Meaningful Literacy”). To further understand experiences of CWAC from the perspective of student authors, this study linguistically examined two sets of texts from undergraduate writers: 221 works of creative nonfiction (CNF) and 43 works of science fiction prototyping (SFP), composed in first-year and advanced writing courses at one predominantly White, public Midwest US polytechnic university. LIWC-22 was utilized to produce descriptive statistics characterizing the narrative arcs typical in each corpus, specifically quantifying use of words signaling story staging, plot progression, and cognitive tension typical in narratives per Freytag’s foundational description (Freytag; Boyd, Blackburn and Pennebaker). Statistical tests of difference (independent-samples t; Mann-Whitney U) uncovered genre-specific arc trends between CNF and SFP stories, suggesting the unique experience of autobiographical CWAC.
Recommended Citation
Nicholes, Justin
(2024)
"Analysis of Narrative Arcs of College Writers’ Creative Writing: Implications for Engaging Creative Writing Across the Curriculum,"
Journal of Creative Writing Studies: Vol. 9:
Iss.
1, Article 6.
Available at:
https://repository.rit.edu/jcws/vol9/iss1/6