- BA (Hons) Creative Writing
This course is in Clearing
Offers from 72 tariff points
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Creative Writing BA (Hons)
- Level(s) of Study: Undergraduate
- Typical Clearing offer: 72 UCAS tariff points
- UCAS Code(s): W800
- Start Date(s): September 2024
- Duration: Three years full-time, four to seven years part-time
- Study Mode(s): Full-time / Part-time
- Campus: City Campus
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Introduction:
This practice-based and industry-focused course – one of the ten best in the UK according to The Times Good University Guide 2024 – will introduce you to the intricacies of writing, including plot, characterisation and narrative study, and will equip you with work-ready skills for the many writing and writing-related industries.
You will develop your skills and talent as a writer through dynamic workshops, exercises and work-like projects involving writing, editing, publishing and pitching, all supplemented by the study of English.
Working alongside a range of highly-accomplished, widely-published professionals, including prize-winning, internationally-recognised authors, poets and screenwriters with real expertise in teaching, you will study at the heart of an active writing community, central to this UNESCO City of Literature. You will also learn how to give and receive critical input from tutors who will support and encourage you to follow your writerly instincts, to experiment, and to develop wide-ranging and highly applicable skills. Exciting, targeted optional modules enable you to pursue your interests.
Our keen focus on developing your employability skillset will ensure you are also extremely well placed to succeed in a wide range of careers.
Develop your creative and professional writing across a wide range of genres, working with highly active, multiple-award-winning expert writer-tutors. See our staff profiles below!
Undertake hands-on roles in creative project management and development, preparing you for work in and beyond the writing and arts industries, developing creative solutions to global problems.
- Develop confidence in your communication, collaboration, and presentation skills.
- Undertake study abroad, if you would like to, with one of our international partners across the world.
Interested in Creative Writing?
Get involved with a summer course specially designed for 15 - 17 year olds.
What you’ll study
With guidance from experts, and as part of a thriving writing and literary community, you will experiment with writing in a wide variety of genres, including fiction, poetry, children’s and young adult fiction, writing for stage and screen, and writing for and with digital technologies. You will also gain valuable hands-on industry experience, and develop a detailed, first-hand knowledge of publishing and the literary industries. Ultimately, you will focus on your chosen specialisations, and further develop your craft and industry skills, equipping yourself fully for life beyond the course.
During the first year, you will study four core modules which focus on developing your own writing and reading skills, while introducing you practically and actively to a wide range of exciting genres and possibilities. In the second year, you will pursue your individual interests through a range of optional modules. There is also an opportunity to spend the second half of the second year on international exchange at one of our partner universities, if you wish to do so. In your final year, with close supervision, you’ll undertake a major project on a topic of your choice, as well as studying optional modules focused on refining your writerly and employability skills. Our course is developed with the utmost care, to allow you to explore enjoyable and exciting pursuits that will develop your writing and writing industry skillset, and your preparedness for graduate employment.
Beginning Writing: The Writing World
This module is designed to help you discover and develop your writing passions. Learn about, and tackle, the core elements of writing fiction, poetry, plays, and screenplays. Hone your skills in areas such as narrative structure, characterisation, dialogue, editing and revision, while learning from an exciting and diverse range of genres and styles of writing.
Writing, Editing and Publishing in a Sustainable World
Your introduction to the varied world of publishing, editing and writing for publication! You will be introduced to the skills required for editing fiction, non-fiction, poetry and scripts, in relation to your own writing and that of other practitioners – both fellow students and published authors.
Writing in a UNESCO City of Literature
Engage with the work undertaken by Nottingham UNESCO City of Literature, as well as with the wider network of UNESCO Creative Cities, connecting with partner organisations in the creative and cultural industries. You will have opportunities on this module to develop work to submit for publishing consideration by Nottingham UNESCO City of Literature, and can opt to write creatively, journalistically or critically.
Literary Pasts, Presents and Futures
Good writers are good readers! Study key authors and literary genres from the past and present, and consider where the literary world is heading now. Consider how texts ‘speak’ to one another across the ages, building a critical understanding of literary heritage, developments and innovations that will inspire your writing.
The Book Group
Explore four texts in depth, spending three weeks on each. This innovative module is designed to introduce you to ‘reading around the text', meaning you will also consider the historical and cultural contexts to excellent writing.
Ways of Reading
This module introduces you to the many different ways in which you might read and interpret texts. You will explore critical approaches to literature, and the different 'lenses' through which it might be read, considering questions related to authorship, publication and form, along with questions relating to writing and interpretation, around issues such as gender, race and the environment. This will encourage you to question what it means to read texts from particular perspectives, what assumptions we make as we read, the relationship between a text and the world, and even what it means to be human.
Core modules
Magazine publishing: concept to dissemination.
Learn about magazine publishing through the ages, the contemporary publishing industry, and the means of producing and disseminating literary publications. Working in a small team, you will collaboratively develop your own literary/cultural magazine, producing and commissioning professional content, and considering everything from commissioning and layout to publication, lunch and dissemination.
Advanced fiction and its Contexts
Further develop your skills at both writing and interpreting fiction. You will consider exciting fiction in various genres, from across the English-speaking world, and will write and edit your own fiction and analysis, refining your craft and style. You will also learn about related aspects of the publishing world.
Imagining the Sustainable World
We live in an era of significant challenges to the wellbeing of the planet and its inhabitants – from global warming, water pollution and energy shortages, to poverty, inequality and conflict. This module will examine how writing from a range of eras and genres might offer insights, warnings, possibilities, sources of hope, and solutions to contemporary problems.
Optional modules
Pathway 1: extended work-like experience.
Get the experience you need for after you graduate, and really understand how the things you study translate into the world of work with a work placement. Your highly experienced Employability Team will help you find a placement to suit your career goals from our huge network of companies, charities, institutions, and beyond.
Pathway 2: An international exchange
Travel the world, meet new friends, and have experiences you will remember for the rest of your life.
Our flexible curriculum has been designed to allow some amazing opportunities for you. Your second year of study is divided into two semesters, giving you the opportunity to take part in an international exchange. You could study with one of international exchange partners in Australia, Europe, USA, Canada, Thailand and many, many more.
Our dedicated team will support you in finding and arranging a suitable exchange. And don't worry about the cost, they will help you apply for any grants or loans you may need, as no one should miss out on the chance to broaden their horizons.
Pathway 3: Taught pathway:
Working with scripts.
Develop your scriptwriting skills, whether for screen, stage, radio, or podcast. Learn about the working environment in which scripts are commissioned, written and produced, and develop important, exciting hands-on skills and experience.
Poetry and its Contexts
This module will introduce you to advanced poetry writing. By engaging with the work of five modern poets, from across the English-speaking world, you will study poetry with a broad range of concerns and in a broad range of styles, and write your own, developing your skill and craft and learning about the markets for poetry.
Romantic Revolutions
This module explores Romantic literature from 1780-1840. This was the era of the French revolution and Napoleonic wars, and also a period of great social change and development in Britain. You will study fiction, poetry and other forms of writing from this era, exploring work by well-known writers such as Wordsworth and Shelley, as well as women’s writing, working-class writing and regional writing. The module will help you to develop your research skills and to engage in creative project ideas focusing on Romantic-era writing and thought. You will also explore how far revolutionary political and social change is reflected in the experimental themes and forms of Romantic writing, as well as considering the role of literature in encouraging social change, and its continued relevance today.
Black Writing in Britain
You will become familiar with many black writers writing in or about Britain from the 1950s until the present day on this module. We will discuss the scope and function of the academic field named Black Writing in Britain, and consider the limitations and opportunities presented by the idea of a Black British literary canon or tradition, by examining the texts in the contexts of consciousness, resistance, and activism, publishing and the literary marketplace, black identity, diaspora and migration, and ideas of national identity. The module encourages debate over the impact of political, social, historical, and cultural contexts on literary texts, and the impact of literary texts on political, social, historical, and cultural contexts.
Intercultural Communication at Work
Gain the knowledge, skills and strategies to build your intercultural communication competence. Analyse and reflect on the impact of culture(s) on your values, assumptions, perceptions, expectations, and behaviours. Build successful verbal and non-verbal communication strategies in different intercultural settings.
People and Planet: pasts, presents, and futures
In this module you will develop an understanding of the human impact on the environment from the 15th Century to the present as a form of slow but sustained violence enacted against the planet. It will also explore how such long-term change can interact with social justice in the present day.
Creative Writing Major Project
This module provides an exciting opportunity to develop your own long-form creative project, which may be a feature-length play/screenplay, piece of fiction, collection of poems or short stories, or something else entirely, with expert supervision from a specialist in your chosen genre.
The Freelancer
Enhance your employability by developing your own personal and professional portfolio. You will work to develop your professional skills in a working environment by completing twelve hours of targeted freelance activity, which you will reflect on in a portfolio.
Optional modules - choose three from:
Poetry and the planet.
This option module considers how contemporary writers think through the relationship between the human and the more-than-human world. You will discuss topics including climate change, environmental justice, species extinction and indigenous knowledge in order to understand how the arts and humanities can help us to engage with modern challenges. Incorporating writing workshops and a field trip, students will have the opportunity to respond creatively and critically using a range of print-based and digital media.
Writing for Magazines: Regional, National and International Contexts
How do freelance writers carve out a niche in magazines and other publications? How are such working relationships built and maintained? This module will introduce you to writing for a wide range of local, national and international magazines, both creatively and critically. You will study the differences, where they exist, between print and digital publication, and write and pitch a range of articles in different styles.
Collaboration and Performance
Collaboration can be vital to working as a writer, and in many other fields of employment. It can also teach you many valuable work and life skills. On this optional module you will examine collaborative writing projects, and then work in small teams, in a writers’ room environment, to develop your own project. You will then advertise it, and perform it for an audience.
Creative Writing in the Community
Develop your theoretical and practical understanding of applying creative writing and workshopping in community settings. This module prepares you for public speaking and developing and running projects, within and beyond creative writing.
Modernist Writing
Modernism changed literature forever! In this module, you will have the opportunity to concentrate in detail on influential, exciting works by some of the major modernist writers of the twentieth century, including James Joyce, Langston Hughes, and Virginia Woolf.
Don’t just take our word for it, hear from our students themselves
Student profiles, megan sprous, creative writing.
I’ve found it a great joy to be able to get to know my tutors over the course of my degree. They’re helpful and insightful, I feel that if I had any issues or questions, they wouldn’t hesitate to lend a hand where they could.
Ellie Jacobson
I gained skills which are transferrable to a work place environment.
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