Creative and Professional Writing

This module is designed as an introduction for students exploring their creativity through developing their own fictional writing and studying exemplary works in the short form. It will enable students to improve their own creative and critical skills, and to learn how to express observations, experiences and perceptions in the form of prose fiction, whilst at the same time developing evaluative skills. It will focus on key tents of fictional writing through analysis of texts and by associated practical exercises. We will discuss such key topics as point of view, characterisation, dialogue, plot, setting and other aspects of the fiction writer’s craft in relation to students’ own work and the work of published authors. The key skills of researching, drafting, revising and editing will be stressed throughout.

This module builds on the work of Prose Fiction 1A, broadening the students’ experience of composing their own fictional writing through the close study of more and more varied, formally and stylistically bolder exemplary works in the short form. Their creative and critical skills will be further sharpened, through analysis of texts and associated practical exercises. We will expand the sense of possibilities available to writers in such key areas of choice as point of view, characterisation, dialogue, plot, setting. The key skills of researching, drafting, revising and editing will be stressed throughout.

In this module students will be introduced to the conventions, forms and techniques of scriptwriting. Students will develop their narrative skills, with particular focus on how film stories are told through scenes and images and transitions suggested to the director by the writer, i.e. by indications of mise-en-scene and montage. Students will develop their skills in the communication of film script narrative though ‘pitch presentations,’ and will practise the writing of outlines and of film script on the page according to the film industry standard. The module will concentrate on fiction film (as opposed to documentary) and will utilise seminars, workshops, and screenings.

This module is designed to enable students to express their own creativity through various poetic strategies, introducing students to a varied range of poetry. Although historical forms and traditions will also be a source of reference there is to be a particular focus on twentieth- and twenty-first century developments, whilst engaging directly with some of the key issues in the production of poetry – including its oral, aural and visual performative aspects. Practical work will be done in workshop groups, graduating to the production of independent poems in different forms.

This module is designed as an introduction for students into the various techniques and strategies of rhetorical writing. It will begin by looking at examples of rhetorical writing from past and present, with an intention to examine and analyse how they work and what they are trying to achieve. Students will then explore how best to develop specific pieces of writing that are intended to persuade, cajole, and seduce the reader for particular reasons and in order to achieve specific effects. The intention all the while is for their writing to be professional, polished, and always suitable to the subject matter.

This module is designed to enable students to work with non-fictional writings, and to learn how to express experiences and perceptions within some of the key strands of this written form (e.g. the memoir, the themed personal essay, the interview-based portrait of a person or research-based portrait of a place etc.) The module is also intended to develop students’ creative and critical skills in tandem, understanding how to read and interpret writing as well as how to produce it. As such, students will be introduced to a varied range of approaches to non-fictional styles. Most work will be done in workshop groups, graduating to the production of independent pieces of non-fiction.

In this module students will look at the global digital publishing world and at social media – at the opportunities and challenges, advantages and disadvantages, which such media present to writers. We will look closely at how online platforms allow writers to publish work, establishing a presence and appealing to different audiences, in a variety of short forms – albeit via writing that must be succinct and precise, edited and refined to required spaces and word-counts. Areas of focus might include the microblogging site Twitter and more expansive blogging platforms such as WordPress, Tumblr, Wix etc. We will look also at where the websites of newspapers and magazines showcase short-form writing such as the capsule review, list, or personal testimony etc. Students will then develop a range of short pieces of their own writing, derived from the same basic idea, each one targeted at a particular platform or outlet for dissemination to a defined, particular readership of said medium.

• Creativity: Process, Practice and Critical Reflection - 15 credits

This module is an introduction to studies which will be advanced by Prose Fiction 2B, in which students develop their own short fictional writing while studying exemplary works in the short form, which will be examined across a number of interrelated axes:

• Time: fostering an awareness of accomplishment in the modern English short story, from the mid-19th century, through modernism, postmodernism and postcolonialism, up to the best writing today
• Place: the breadth of places globally where work in English has been produced, and the distinctiveness of voices represented therein; as well as the diverse range of life-experience to which a writer can bring their imagination
• Form: e.g. narrative conventions of beginning, middle and end, and how those elements might be presented (cf. Godard) ‘not necessarily in that order.’ Similarly, experiments in point of view: e.g. narrators who are reliably unreliable or purposely inarticulate, and prose style from the ‘high style’ to the fragmented and discordant.

This module builds on Prose Fiction 2A in its focus upon students developing their own short fictional writing while studying exemplary works in the short form, which will be examined across a number of interrelated axes:

• Time: further evidencing how the best writing of today has a clear context in and inheritance from writing of the past
• Place: further expanding the student’s sense of where outstanding work in English has been produced globally, and what kinds of diverse life-experience can be the grist of fiction
• Form: further developing the student’s appreciation of how fictional forms and voices can be experimented with.

This module allows students to engage with a range of copywriting tasks within a variety of copywriting contexts. They will develop their own writing skills in this area in relation to specific tasks (advertising, marketing etc.) but only after they have gained knowledge of the ways/conditions in which copywriters work and the role they play within a creative team. Students will research into a variety of examples of successful copywriting (both past and present) and examine the reasons for this success – both in terms of the text itself and also the ways in which it tapped into a specific audience at a specific moment in time.

Building on Creative Non-Fiction, this module will show students why creative non-fiction is a major growth area in contemporary publishing, one that provides writers with lots of potential opportunities to work professionally. A range of exemplary texts will be studied, in familiar forms such as memoir, and additionally in forms such as biography and travel writing. Unconventional and innovative styles of narration will be considered, alongside more standard linear narratives. Students will delve deeper into research methods, how to use sources both private and public, as well as into the challenges and problems of such excavations. Students will then develop their own writing skills in creating and shaping relatable narratives from real-life origins, appreciating also the occasionally blurred lines between fictional and factual modes. Through practical workshops they will develop and refine a piece of creative non-fiction prior to eventual submission.

This module will see students developing their own media writing skills within the context of a wider consideration and understanding of the options and constraints attached to various media institutions, discourses and forms. This will include issues related to writing for online platforms, print newspapers and magazines, etc. They will contemplate a spectrum of potential audiences and publication outlets for their writing (including competitions and open calls for material), exploring and adapting their own particular writing interests in relation to these. They will need to look at a wide range of media products, and to consider the various possibilities for writing on diverse topics. Finally they will produce for assessment two differing written treatments of the same idea aimed at different media outlets.

• Scriptwriting for Mainstream Television - 15 credits
• Poetry: Making it New - 15 credits
• Gothic, Horror and Ghost Stories - 15 credits
• Middle-Grade & Young Adult (YA) Fiction - 15 credits
• Composing Song Lyrics - 15 credits
• Playwriting 1 - 15 credits
• Interactive & Experimental Fictions - 15 credits
• Writing & the Environment - 15 credits
• Fairy Tales, Folklore & Mythology - 15 credits
• Professional Placement Module - 15 credits
• Volunteering for Creative & Professional Writing - 15 credits
• Value Studies - 15 credits

Students can choose either Extended Creative Project or Extended Professional Project.

The Extended Creative Project consists of:

• a piece of creative/professional writing of 8500 words (with word count exceptions such as those in a poetry collection to be agreed by supervising tutor)
• a supporting rationale/contextualisation of 1500 words
• a supporting bibliography

Study and writing is primarily student-directed, with supervision supplied by tutors teaching/researching in the area of creative writing.

Students can choose either Extended Creative Project or Extended Professional Project.

The Extended Professional Project consists of:

• a piece/portfolio of professional writing of c. 8500 words or equivalent
• a supporting rationale/contextualisation of c. 1500 words
• a supporting bibliography

Study and writing is primarily student-directed, with supervision supplied by tutors teaching/researching in the area of professional writing.

This module builds upon Level 5 Prose Fiction 2A/AB by way of a similar focus upon students developing their own short fictional writing in prose, and by close study of exemplary longer works in the novel/novella forms. It will broaden students’ familiarity with some of the boldest stylistic choices and treatments of theme available to writers and will encourage them to experiment with and develop their own fictional voice. The perennial key craft elements of point of view, characterisation, dialogue, plot, setting etc will be highlighted; likewise the key skills of researching, drafting, revising and editing. Attention will be paid to wider debates about issues such as ethics and diversity, and we will also consider nuanced issues of genre definition. Students will additionally be encouraged to think about how writers and publishers market their work, and current professional publication practices.

• Playwriting 2 - 15 credits
• Creative Vigilance: Fictions & Metafictions - 15 credits
• Creative Non-fiction for Children - 15 credits
• Writing Comics & Graphic Novels - 15 credits
• Writing for Games - 15 credits
• Creative Visions - 15 credits
• Writing Historical Fiction - 15 credits
• Adapting Crime Fictions - 15 credits
• Science Fictions & Fantasies - 15 credits
• Poetry: Writing for Publication - 15 credits
• Script to Screen - 15 credits
• Write Yourself Well: Creative Writing as Therapy - 15 credits
• The Critical Path to Print Publication - 15 credits
• Digital Authorship - 15 credits
• Creative Teaching for Creative Writing - 15 credits
• Business Storytelling - 15 credits
• Writing for Radio - 15 credits