NC 701: Creative Writing for Older Adults

Citrus College Course Outline of Record

Citrus College Course Outline of Record
Heading Value
Effective Term: Fall 2025
Credits: 0
Total Contact Hours: 12
Lecture Hours : 12
Lab Hours: 0
Hours Arranged: 0
Outside of Class Hours: 24
Total Student Learning Hours: 36
Transferable to CSU: No
Transferable to UC: No
Grading Method: Non-Credit Course

Catalog Course Description

This nonfiction creative writing course will focus on establishing consistent, regular writing habits with a focus on developing a personal writing style. Students will explore writing through personal essays, profile writings, and a variety of other types of creative nonfiction, such as literary journalism, opinion articles, and biographies. Open entry/exit. 12 lecture hours.

Course Objectives

  • Maintain regular diary, journal, or free writing entries.
  • Identify characteristics of personal essays, profiles, biographies, and literary journalism.
  • Apply appropriate writing attributes to selected writing types.
  • Demonstrate application of the writing process to personal written works, which includes brainstorming, organizing ideas, creating an outline, developing a draft, and revising work.
  • Produce 3-5 original writing samples including a personal essay, a profile writing, and at least one other sample type chosen by the student.
  • Incorporate feedback, preferred writing styles, and additional exploration of note-worthy topics in writing samples.

Major Course Content

  1. Begin or maintain habitual writings in a diary, journal, or free writing log
    1. Set schedule for writing and limited amount
    2. Define type of writing to be used
  2. Compare and identify outstanding characteristics of nonfiction writing samples
    1. Personal essay
      1. Thought-provoking
      2. Entertaining
      3. Humorous
    2. Profile
      1. Known or unknown individual
      2. Background, present, and future
    3. Biography
      1. Chronological delineation of an individual in 3rd person
    4. Literary journalism
      1. Subjectively document event
    5. Sample travel, history, opinion, and advertisement writing
      1. Travel history, preferences, and subjective experiences
    6. Historic events through viewpoint of the author
      1. Detailed exploration current and relevant facts to the author at the time of the event
    7. Opinion and advertisement writing
      1. Persuasive writing
  3. Utilize the 5-step writing process
    1. Brainstorming
      1. Creative nonstructured exploration of ideas
      2. Sources of ideas
      3. Expanding ideas
    2. Organizing
      1. Methods of organizing
        1. Groups
        2. Contrasts
        3. Cause/effect relationships
        4. Chronological relationships
        5. Problem/solution
    3. Creating an outline
      1. Topic outline
      2. Sentence outline
      3. Numeric outline
    4. Creating a draft
      1. Free writing
      2. Structured writing
    5. Revising draft
      1. Peer evaluation
      2. Exploring and elaborating on topics of interest
      3. Editing
        1. Grammar
        2. Structure
        3. Vocabulary
        4. Style and incorporating style
  4. Incorporation of selected writing styles
    1. Identify vocabulary and grammatical patterns in writing types
    2. Apply preferred styles into individual writings

Suggested Reading Other Than Required Textbook

Course readings will be supplied by instructor.

Instruction Type(s)

Lecture, Online Education Lecture