Creative Writing

Core Modules:

Beginning Writing 

This module will introduce you to the core elements of writing fiction, poetry, scripts and creative non-fiction. These will include narrative structure, characterisation, dialogue, editing, and the revision of text. You’ll also look at a range of different genres and styles of writing.

Questioning the Canon 

Understand and question the 'English literary canon' through examining the texts which have tended to be defined as the greatest works of English Literature and how these have influenced and shaped the study. The module contains a practical element, which provides you with training to create podcasts and blog posts; two increasingly relevant modes of communicating in the English literary field.

Writing and Editing

The module will introduce you to the fundamentals of editing fiction, non-fiction, poetry and scripts. Classes will take a variety of approaches to editing, from large to small-scale edits, peer review, focused feedback, written feedback, collaboration, and blind reading of work.

The Book Group: Reading Texts in Small Groups / Curating Nottingham: Introduction to Professional Writing 

The ethos of the Book Group is that of concentrated intellectual conversation about literature. While the focus is on detailed textual analysis, conversations are likely to range into issues of context, genre, form, language and theme. The Curating Nottingham element provides the opportunity to develop "real-life” writing assignments with a Nottingham focus.

Core Modules:

Publishing: Concept to dissemination

The module will introduce you to the concepts of gaining ownership of a publishing project. You’ll learn about publishing throughout the ages, and about the means of producing literary publications. This can encompass a variety of modes and forms.

Literary Cultures I (Journal/Conference)

This module aims to enable you to work collaboratively to produce a professional output – either a conference for a public audience, or a published journal. You’ll work in groups, and you’ll undertake a professional role as well as producing an output.

Optional modules typically available include:

Advanced Poetry

The module will introduce you to advanced poetry writing. By engaging with the work of six post-war poets, you will study the work of a carefully selected range of poetry and poetic styles. An introductory close reading of an individual poet will be followed by a writing workshop. You will continue to develop strategies in relation to researching and drafting your creative work.

Writing for Short Film

This module will explore the relationship between the short film and an audience as well as how stories are influenced by actors, directors and other types of collaboration. You will explore practical elements of writing craft including ideas generation and exploration, researching, story-lining, writing, re-writing and pitching. The module will take you from initial idea through to a second draft of a 10-page fiction script, suitable for low budget production.

Digital Storytelling

This module aims to provide you with opportunities to explore how digital technologies can be used within your creative practice and be potentially used as part of a digital portfolio to show future employers. You will become confident in devising and presenting your own material online through hypertext, audio and visual means. Through weekly practical workshops, you will learn the techniques of multi-layered online publication to produce a ‘digital story’.

The Anthology

Examine poetry anthologies and develop skills in critical evaluation of poetry, editing and book construction. You'll work in groups to produce your own sample anthology.

Black Writing in Britain

Examine a range of literary texts by black writers written in or about Britain from the 1950s until the present day.

Writing Works

This module will encourage you to study and partake in the practice of writing with a focus on the breadth of genre. You'll also rework samples of writing in specialist areas.

Voices and Visions

You'll be introduced to new writing specialisms with a particular focus on visual and vocal communication. Throughout this module you'll practice independent learning strategies and draft original creative work to enhance collaboration, research, editing and reviewing skills. You'll be taught how to combine information, think laterally and develop resonant visual and sonic narratives.

Core Module:

Dissertation 

This module facilitates the process of working independently, with peers and with a supervisor, to construct and finish – to a high standard – an original piece of creative writing. This may be a screenplay, a play script, a short story or collection of short stories, a collection of poetry, the start of a novel, a game, or a piece of graphic fiction.

Optional modules

English and Creative Industries Project

Working with an employer on a defined project or output, you’ll utilise the skills and knowledge gained over the course of your studies within a work setting. Under supervision, you will plan, manage and deliver a work-based project. (NB: This module may be taken alongside the dissertation)

Other optional modules typically available include:

The Freelancer

This module gives you the chance to develop your professional portfolio. You will be supported by a tutor and the industry team as you audit your skills, update your CV, develop contacts through networking and carry out an assignment set by an Industry client. You will develop your professional skills in a working environment by completing 12-hours of freelance activity which you will reflect on in your portfolio.

Performance and Collaboration

The module will introduce you to the art of collaboration. You will improve your communication skills while collaborating on stories, plays or projects, create and edit work for performance and research live literature events. You will be expected to produce and deliver material in a variety of ways, which may include site specific installations, working to commission, spoken word, screenplays and multimedia presentations.

Postcolonial Texts: Narratives of Liberation

This module will focus on a range of postcolonial texts and consider the relationship between acts of representation and the politics of anti-colonialism and post-colonialism. This module will help you to develop the ability to work across a range of theoretical and literary texts in original ways.

Travel Writing: Texts, Contexts, Theory

Gain an overview of travel writing and consider the relationship of travel writing to society and to other forms of literature. There will be an in-depth study of selected regions, authors and themes. There are many issues that you may want to explore, such as construction of self and place in travel writing and traveller's representations of other cultures.

Modernism and Modernity

Throughout this module you'll explore some of the central features of the many transnational movements of modernism through a selection of literary texts. You'll examine how the experimental qualities of modernist culture were conditioned by responses to changes in social and technological modernity. An innovative feature of the module is the focus upon the modernist little magazine (which will be studied in digital form, therefore introducing some of the ideas of Digital Humanities to students).

Nuclear Literature: Culture in the Atomic Age

Introduces students to the literary and cultural impact of a key technology and the latest debates in the Nuclear Humanities. Engaging students with research being undertaken into this subject at NTU, the module considers the representation of nuclear technology and science in literary texts, as well as the questions raised for literature by the dawning of the nuclear age.

American Specialisms

American Specialisms provides an opportunity for students to pursue the advanced study of one or two American literature specialisms, developed from recent and current research being carried out by tutors. You will be encouraged to intervene in current debates in American literature, engaging directly with expert researchers in the field, and consider how the subject is being shaped by contemporary thinking. You will cover a particular topic in American Studies, which will allow you to explore issues such as sustainability, the relationship between the local and global and the effect of modernity.