What you will study
This course is intellectually stimulating and exciting, designed to provide you with opportunities for creative writing across a variety of genres and media, embracing poetry, prose fiction and non-fiction, professional writing, and writing for performance on stage, radio and
screen.
You'll work with published writers, academics and industry professionals on writing for digital media, pitches, exhibitions, reviews, and articles.
Modules
Each level is made up of four modules each worth 30 credit points. Typically a student must complete 120 credits at each level.
Year 1
In your first year, you'll be introduced to the field of creative writing through a variety of practical workshops and seminars. You'll attend interactive lectures, small-group discussions and individual writing exercises.
Core modules
Practical Journalism 1
30 credits
Writing is a key communication tool of journalism. This module introduces you to the language, practical conventions, contexts and functions of written journalism in the multimedia environment. Through studying and critically analysing the structure, style and content of articles published on websites, in newspapers and magazines you will begin to develop an understanding of how copy is gathered, put together and directed at specific readerships.
Through lectures and through practice in workshops you will learn to identify a story from raw, diffuse or incomplete information by the application of news values, to write it in appropriate style, to add headlines and online "furniture" and to upload it to a content management system.
Writing clear, accurate and engaging text relies on understanding and applying the rules of grammar, using the right words and constructing coherent prose. This module also helps you to boost your grammar and punctuation skills, choose and use appropriate words and craft effective sentences and paragraphs. You will discover the underlying rules and principles, consider the impact of your writing decisions and develop your own writing and editing skills.
Also, by examining and practising skills needed to develop and write pieces such as: originating ideas, researching, assessing the reliability of sources, interviewing, organising material and adhering to house style, you will aim to produce journalistic news pieces and feature articles that are suitable for publication.
Introduction to Creative Writing I: The Writer's Toolkit
30 credits
This module centres upon practical work designed to develop the skills appropriate to the undergraduate study of creative writing. These skills will be focused in the following areas: the analysis and use of published writing; language and style; seminar/workshop practice; and habits of writing, self-reflection and revision. The module will investigate how writers think about their craft and the techniques they use to write most effectively in their various mediums. Weekly lectures will be given by practicing writers who will introduce students to their own published work as well as that of a wide range of other authors. Students will read, analyse and discuss poems, short stories, plays and essays, and will develop a greater awareness of language and style in writing through a variety of exercises. These workshop exercises will allow students to establish guidelines for constructive participation and encourage co-operation and self-reflection.
Writing that Works
30 credits
This module is designed to familiarise students across the humanities with a range of rhetorical strategies, aesthetic techniques, redrafting and editing skills, while also providing the opportunity to practise writing and editing in a number of critical, literary, creative and professional forms. In "Writing that Works" students are introduced to key techniques for writing effectively and they develop their ability to identify strengths and weaknesses in writing by studying exemplary texts in each form. The first strand of the module focuses on writing, techniques. Students create a piece of original writing and this work is then developed in weekly workshop sessions that align with interactive lectures focused on different aspects of writing. The impact that language choices make on the effectiveness of writing will lead on to the discussion of audience, social context, identity and voice. In the second strand, the focus turns to writing in professional contexts. The interactive workshops focus on writing in a number of professional contexts and students practise using a range of techniques and strategies to produce professional documents. The framework of the module, and the core content we aim to transfer to students, is a firm grasp of rhetorical strategies and how to employ them to the best advantage depending on the form in which they are writing, the intended audience for their work and the ideas they hope to share.
Introduction to Communication
30 credits
This module is a core requirement for students of English Language. It introduces you to language as a tool for human communication drawing on linguistics and its related disciplines. The main features of the module are (a) its focus on the analysis of language use and meaning in context and (b) its concern with key issues in intercultural communication.
You will study language as communication in its social and cultural contexts and gain an insight into the formation of meaning and social relationships. The module will initiate you to the key concepts and frameworks for describing and analysing discourse, (ie. language above the sentence), with specific reference to meaning in context, talk in interaction, narrative practices and discourse strategies in intercultural encounters.
By the end of this module, you should have gained an insight into the nature of human communication and feel competent at discussing instances of everyday and institutional communication, demonstrating familiarity with the key frameworks in the study of communication in linguistics. This module will also encourage the development of your interactional and intercultural competencies.
Year 2
In the second year, there is an increasing emphasis on private study and independent writing.
You'll develop the appropriate skills, techniques, and practices in order to produce a sustained piece of writing in poetry and fiction.
Core modules
Style and Meaning
30 credits
This module explores the linguistic study of style and meaning in a range of contexts, such as spoken and written mediums, including natural conversation, literary and media texts. It brings together work from the fields of stylistics and pragmatics to consider how we use and understand language in use. The topics presented in this module focus on contextual meaning and its effects, exploring aspects of language and creativity, as well as key theories and frameworks in stylistics and pragmatics to understand how style and meaning are created and interpreted. The module builds on the foundational knowledge acquired at Level 4 and prepares students for work at Level 6 by introducing concepts and ideas that can be explored in Special Studies or as a final-year English Language and Communication Dissertation project.
Independent Creative Writing
30 credits
This is a dissertation-style module, taught through a combination of small-group sessions and individual tutorials, in which students will have the opportunity to work on a sustained creative writing project of their choosing. They will produce a substantial piece of writing in a chosen form, having undertaken contextual reading in that form and engaged in other research as appropriate, such as location scouting, conducting interviews, or visiting archives and specialist collections. Through group workshops and presentations, as well as one-on-one tutorials, students will receive constructive feedback and guidance on how to plan, structure, write, revise, and edit their projects, and gain advice in developing the skills and habits necessary to working independently. In addition, students will learn how to plan strategies for the possible dissemination and promotion of their projects in the world outside the university, as professional authors would, such as through various methods of publication or performance. By learning to work independently and by planning the dissemination and promotion of their projects, students will acquire the entrepreneurial skills and abilities necessary for success in self-employment and in other professions.
Optional modules
Content, Form and Creativity
30 credits
On this module, you will have the opportunity to progress your creative writing skills by exploring the relationship between theory and practice. You will be presented with a range of theoretical and contextual approaches to the production of imaginative work, and will be invited to respond to these provocations through their creative projects. You will attend interactive lectures whose themes may include psychogeography, adaptation, narrative techniques for literary authors, history and narrative, identity and aesthetics. You will learn more advanced practical techniques for crafting expressive, imaginative work, which will allow you to make more sophisticated use of aspects such as voice, point of view, structure, character, imagery, and tone. The module will entail the reading and discussion of texts by a variety of contemporary authors, whose work reflects the diverse range of styles and approaches at work today. You can choose to experiment with writing the novel, short story, script for radio, stage or screen, or poetry. You will be asked to participate in improving each other's work by offering thoughtful, constructive feedback. Along with developing your own personal sense of voice and style, you will practise applying skills learned on the module to real-world situations faced by professional authors, such as writing a piece for a commission or for a target audience.
Magazine Journalism
30 credits
The UK magazine industry has never been more exciting and challenging. Despite digital and economic changes modern magazines devoted to trends and interests endure. This module looks at how these contemporary publications are positioned and how they co-operate to weave together strands of information. In this module you will learn about the contexts in which contemporary magazines operate. You will look at the current state of the periodicals sector and reflect on trends and developments by researching, originating and developing a magazine concept for a specified readership. You will build effective editorial, team-working skills and adapt these to the needs of differing audiences and objectives through the origination and production of your own magazine. You will apply journalistic skills to create a portfolio of articles and will use design and layout skills to produce a dummy magazine.
Write Action: Introduction to Dramatic Writing
30 credits
The module introduces you to the craft of writing dramatic scripts for stage, screen and radio. Through a series of practical exercises, writing tasks and feedback you will become familiar with key principles of dramatic writing that apply across the three forms. A refined sense of how 'conflict' and 'action' build suspense, tension, humour or pathos; of how to create characters that draw the audience's empathy; of the importance of 'subtext' and of how to harness the scenographic dimension through stage directions and settings, all contribute to the craft of a successful dramatic writer. In addition, sessions on radio and screen writing will not only introduce students to the specific conventions of these forms but also, in drawing attention to the spoken word and aural dimension (in radio) and visual story-telling (in screen), you will be sensitised to the power of the scenography as a component of dramatic craft.
Introduction to Screenwriting
30 credits
Film is often seen as a director's medium, rather than a writer's. This course doesn't debate the relative claims of either - it retains a strong commitment to the visual - but its primary focus is on the construction of script and, in particular, the screenplay of the mainstream narrative film.
The cornerstone of the module is an exploration of what makes an effective screen story through analysis of dramatic structure. The tutors on this module, both experienced screenwriters, contend that all genres of screen narrative use essentially the same core principles of storytelling and that an understanding of how these principles work is a creative tool: we can use them to create our own stories and adapt them to different forms. First, through close study of several successful films - focusing in particular on structure and character - you will be taught the contribution of the screenplay to how a film is constructed and why it succeeds. Second, with particular emphasis on dialogue and the craft of visual storytelling, we will guide you to the creation and completion of your own short screenplay, providing you with models (in both film and script form) from a selection of short films, and teaching you how to present and format your script.
Students will be invited to demonstrate their knowledge of structure and screenwriting craft in analysis of a feature film. In TB2 they will pitch an original idea for a screen narrative before developing their own screenplay.
Transforming Realities: Innovation and Social Change in Twentieth Century and Contemporary Literature
30 credits
This module is an optional period module at Level 5. It will begin by exploring literature published from the 1930s through to the present day, and will examine the strategies writers have used in response to a changing Britain and wider world. We will consider how twentieth and twenty-first-century texts adapt realist, modernist and postmodern techniques to engage with issues such as the rise of mass culture, the threat of totalitarianism, the establishment of the Welfare State, post-war immigration, and sexual liberation. To enhance your perspective on these issues, you will be introduced to non-fiction material by other contemporary writers, such as J.B. Priestley, Erich Fromm, Iris Murdoch, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Richard Hoggart, and George Lamming, as well as more recent critical and theoretical material. The module also examines the development and continuing popularity of realist drama in the twentieth century. We will pay particular attention to the ways in which realist drama is used as a tool of social and political examination in the various contexts of pre-Revolutionary Russia, Dublin in the aftermath of the First World War, and the establishment of the welfare state in Britain after 1945. Secondly, we will examine the developments in non-realist forms of drama and the experiments which gave rise to what is, somewhat controversially, called the 'Theatre of the Absurd'. The module culminates with the study of a selection of texts chosen to illustrate the great variety of genres and styles in contemporary British literature and to exemplify literature written by different nationalities and social groups. Underpinned by relevant theoretical perspectives, questions will be raised about the relation between literature and contemporary events, with relation to issues pertinent to literature, such as social mobility, hybridity, democracy and technology. In recent years, authors studied have included Evelyn Waugh, Graham Greene, George Orwell, Sylvia Plath, Harold Pinter, Alan Hollinghurst, and Zadie Smith.
Optional year
This degree is also available with a sandwich option. Students selecting this route will be supported by the placements office in finding a suitable work placement.
Final year
In your final year, you'll have the opportunity to complete an extended writing project on a subject of your choice, and to work on real-life industry projects, giving you vital employment experience.
Through optionality, both at assessment and module level, the programme will enable you to tailor your degree to suit your interests and employment or enterprise goals. Workshops will allow you to hone your writing craft, while lectures and seminars will give you the tools you need to develop your own creativity.
Core modules
Dissertation: Creative and Professional Writing
30 credits
Professional Writing in Practice
30 credits
This module is a capstone for the Creative Writing degree. The module asks students to synthesise knowledge developed across the programme, and to articulate and apply this knowledge in professional contexts.
In the first part of the module, supported by industry professionals drawn from the programmes Industry Advisory Board, skills workshops, Kingston's Careers and Employability Service activities, and online training provision, students will develop an individually-designed digital professional portfolio that will communicate their creative talents and broader transferable skills.
In the second part of the module, students will work in small groups as miniature creative agencies on live professional briefs commissioned by industry professionals, developing both their writing and transferable skills in real work scenarios.
Optional modules
Special Study: Literary Journalism and War
30 credits
In this special study you will read closely four exceptional books of journalism dealing with war. In these books – from George Orwell's account of the Spanish Civil War to Dexter Filkins's reporting on the American invasion of Iraq – the writers are centre stage, exploring their own feelings and beliefs as they try to make sense of the chaos of war. Through analysing the texts you will examine the historical, cultural and theoretical contexts of the conflicts themselves and how journalism deals with describing war. Through close attention to the style of these writers you will become familiar with literary journalism and be given an opportunity to develop your own narrative writing.
Beyond Text: Advanced Dramatic Writing
30 credits
This module is an optional module for all Drama and Creative Writing students at Level 6 and runs throughout the academic year. Responding to the changing status of live performance in the twenty-first century, the module explores alternatives to the mainstream 'dramatic' tradition of playwriting. It takes into consideration how cultural shifts such as the advent of new technologies and a global community are or might be reflected in contemporary writing for the stage and in media-based performance (for example audio drama and experimental film). You will encounter a selection of play-texts and performances from the historical and contemporary avant-garde which act as prompts to your creative explorations of playwriting and performance writing methods and techniques. You are encouraged to be experimental and innovative in your own writing, and to question the role of both the theatre and the playwright. This is a practical and creative module that may involve performance-based exercises (for example improvisation and task-based performance) as well as writing ones.
The module develops understandings and themes encountered in DA5005 The Play Today and is particularly suited to those who achieved a pass or above in DA5001 Write Action. The module is ideal preparation for those who are considering masters level study in playwriting, as well as those looking to pursue performance-making after graduation.
Special Author
30 credits
This module allows students to study two authors in depth across a sustained period of time. In each year, the module will be taught in two blocks, each focused on the works of a single author who falls under the research specialism of one or more members of staff. Each block may involve the study of several texts or the extended, in-depth study of a longer work of literature. Information as to the current year's content will be released prior to the selection of student options, but will change each year to reflect staff research interests. Possible authors for study might include (but are not limited to) novelists such as Jane Austen, Thomas Hardy, Virginia Woolf, George Orwell, James Joyce, Salman Rushdie, Kazuo Ishiguro, or Don DeLillo, poets such as John Milton, Samuel Coleridge, Sylvia Plath, or Ted Hughes, or dramatists such as Christopher Marlowe, Oscar Wilde, Harold Pinter, or Caryl Churchill. Alternatively, the module may in some years also focus on a memoir or short story writer, travel writer, or notable literary theorist or philosopher. The module is assessed by a critical or creative project and two essays.
Black and Asian Writing
30 credits
This module examines the rich and dynamic presence of black and Asian writing in English from the mid-17th century to the present. It will explore the ways in which black and Asian writers have produced formally innovative and conceptually challenging responses to questions of race, class, gender and identity, while simultaneously making significant creative contributions to the fields of drama, prose, poetry, and life-writing. In the first half of the module, students will study a range of early texts from the mid-17th century to the 19th century from writers such as Equiano and Mary Seacole, alongside contemporary works that have reflected on black culture during this period, while the second half of the module turns to 20th century and contemporary texts by writers such as Zadie Smith, Andrea Levy, and Salman Rushdie contextualised by appropriate critical and cultural theories from thinkers such as Paul Gilroy and Stuart Hall.
Making Shakespeare: Text, Performance and Adaptation
30 credits
This optional Level 6 module allows you to pursue Shakespeare studies at an advanced level and is founded upon a detailed and extensive study of the writer and his works. Consideration will be given to a range of critical approaches to Shakespeare as well as the long history and dynamic status of Shakespeare in performance and adaptation, for example in relation to questions of gender, identity and globalisation. You will be encouraged to reflect upon the role of Shakespeare in culture now as well as relevant contemporary contexts such as the nature of early modern theatregoing alongside crucial political and religious conditions. Teaching on the module will be closely aligned with the rich resources available at the Rose Theatre and in particular will afford you the opportunity to participate in the stimulating series of talks and events organised as part of the Kingston Shakespeare Seminar (KiSS).
Gender and Sexuality
30 credits
This module traces how literature from the 19th century to the present has concerned itself with questions of gender identity and sexuality, often offering a radical voice for those - including both women and LGBTQ+ voices - excluded from dominant and mainstream discourses. Rooted in feminist and queer theory, we will explore how feminist writing has critiqued patriarchy, how literature has challenged normative gender roles, how it has engaged with powerful questions regarding the body and the politics of desire, and how it has represented the debates within different facets of the feminist and queer community. We will also consider how writers have employed literary form and genre - for example the use of experimental writing, dramatic or poetic form, or the romance genre - and to what extent debates surrounding these forms and genre contribute to a gendered politics of cultural production. Explicitly intersectional in its approach, we will frame our discussions with an interrogation of how the politics of gender and sexuality is shaped by its relationship with questions of class, race, disability, and religion. Examples of authors studied might include Jeanette Winterson, Fleur Adock, Carol Ann Duffy, Tony Kushner, Clare Macintyre, Leila Aboulela, Mary Wollstonecraft, and Virginia Woolf.
Special Study: Narrative Techniques in Popular Fiction
30 credits
This challenging and interesting special study module aims to provide you with the opportunity to engage with different examples of popular fiction such as crime fiction, romance, the thriller, and science fiction. It will enable you to identify the standard practices of popular genres and understand why they succeed or fail in particular texts. It will encourage you in the critical study of narrative techniques to best learn how to apply them in a work of popular fiction. You will experiment in writing crime, SF, thriller and romance stories before choosing one or two of these genres to take through to your final submission. All this will be put into the context of more general and transferable lessons to be learnt in the art of compelling storytelling.
For each genre studied you will read two core novels, plus a more general theoretical text on narrative construction. The module is lead by a writer of four published crime/thrillers.
Creative Writing Special Study: Get a Life: Forms of (Auto)biography
30 credits
This year-long module focuses on the study and creative practice of (auto)biography and memoir, some of the most interesting and thriving literary genres. It is aimed at those tempted by the idea of writing about their own and others' lives, wishing to read a variety of life stories and examine the many different ways in which a life story can become a book.
We will explore exciting examples of autobiographical writing, looking at the highly literary and the popular bestsellers alike. Authors will range from Virginia Woolf and Gertrude Stein to Tracey Emin and Cheryl Cole, or another of your favourite – or most irritating -- celebrities and his or her ghost writer.
We will sample, and experiment in, some of the many subgenres of life writing, which include childhood narratives, investigations of family secrets, testimony, graphic memoir, illness memoir, stories of trauma and abuse, war memoir, celebrity autobiography, and many others. Conceptual analysis will be reinforced by practical work designed to enable you to understand the issues in relation to your own creative life writing project.
Creative Writing Special Study: Innovations in Poetry and Prose
30 credits
This module will cover the study of a number of different kinds of poetry and prose, with a focus on innovations in contemporary literature. It will examine some of the 20th- and 21st-century movements that have informed and continue to influence contemporary poetry and prose, such as modernism, dada, surrealism, sound poetry, visual poetry, constraint-based writing, the nouveau roman and "language" poetry, as well as the aesthetic and stylistic theories underpinning them (for instance, in manifestos and essays about poetry written by the poets and writers themselves).
Attention will be given to the contextual aspects of poetry and prose, as well as the content. The course will explore the reasons poets and writers innovate, the reasoning for experimentation and the ways in which poets and writers shape and structure poems and prose - exploring the nature of sound and language itself. The content of such works will be explored, which may involve non-traditional subject matter or interactions with other art forms, such as music or the visual arts, and their theoretical underpinning too (literary, social, theoretical, historical, stylistic). Analysis of the works studied will be reinforced by practical exercises and assignments designed to enable students to understand these concepts in relation to their own creative work, and to offer them the opportunity to experiment with their own writing and poetry.
Students will make poetry and prose portfolios and/or recorded readings which they can use as part of their writing CV, and which may be featured in the end-of-year Awards and Achievement Show.
Box Set Drama: Writing for Television
30 credits
This is the module that can make you rich! On terrestrial and digital platforms, in both drama and comedy, the returning drama series remains TV's holy grail, pulling viewers in for episode after episode, season after season, box set after box set. For producers and writers – and the ‘showrunners' who are both – a returning series can be a goldmine. So how do these TV blockbusters get made? What makes them successful? And could you write one?
Taught by two highly experienced professionals, Box Set Drama is a practical and creative module which explores how a returning drama or comedy series is conceived and constructed – and gives you the tools to write one. Through close study of a few successful shows (and some not so successful), you will learn how to structure a series, build characters and stories, hook an audience, and dramatise action for the screen. Building from concept to treatment to script, with the aid of practical exercises and regular feedback, you will then develop a pitch for your own original show, aimed at the current television market. If you are keen to understand screen narrative and genre, find out how television drama works and explore writing for a visual medium, this module is for you. You will be taught basic principles of scriptwriting and storylining and, after two stimulating and entertaining semesters, will have generated a pitch and supporting portfolio for your own idea, written to industry standards.
