BA (Hons) Creative and Professional Writing

MODULES

Foundation Year

CORE MODULES

Academic Development

This module will provide students with the opportunity to identify the skills, competencies and experience required for successful development to embarking on their university degree and successfully completing it and progressing on to a range of potential future career areas.

Central to the developmental process is for each student to cultivate the reflective skills, openness and self-awareness to enable themselves to assess what they are doing, identify areas for improvement, and confidently receive and give constructive feedback.

Social Media Project

The module will develop basic individual research and production skills for social media content. Students will also develop their reflection and evaluation skills. Throughout the module students will create new content for a social media account relating to their chosen subject pathway, or topic of interest. Students will also be encouraged to consider current issues and debates surrounding social media.

Creative Writing Portfolio

The module will introduce students to key ideas in creative writing. You will produce a portfolio of different types of creative writing and reflect on these accordingly. You will read a variety of creative texts and texts about writing craft. The emphasis will be on producing lots of drafts to get used to regularly writing and reading.

Narrative and Creativity

This module will provide students with the opportunity to identify the skills and knowledge necessary to create oral, visual and written narratives for all kinds of media production. This module aims to give students the theoretical understanding of narrative and creativity. Throughout the module students will be encouraged to consider how these theories shape their chosen subject. Students will be assessed on their ability to present their understanding of narrative theories and give supporting examples of how these apply to various forms of media.

Ways of Looking

This module will introduce students to how meaning is made and transmitted in visual texts. Students will be introduced to the various ‘ways of looking’ (frameworks) at media, and how this is applies to current media examples. Students will be expected to conduct their own research and encouraged to consider how the ‘ways of looking’ at media can be applied to their own subject specific pathway.

Students will also learn how to apply key composition and aesthetic (typography, colour, and layout) skills to their own work in the form an academic poster using industry standard software.

Mental Wealth: Professional Development

This module will provide students with the opportunity to identify the skills, competencies and experience required for employment and employability and how employability and industry connections are implemented in the curriculum.

You will begin to recognise the areas for your own personal professional development (including emotional, social, physical, cultural and cognitive intelligences) through taught and workshop activity.

Central to the developmental process is for each student to cultivate their reflective skills through collaboration with other undergraduate students and analysing effective approaches to industry briefs and creative problem solving.

Year 1

CORE MODULES

Forms & Genres

This module introduces you to the most fundamental elements of a writer's toolkit: narrative forms and genre. It explores archetypal conventions of various story types, structural templates and characters over a range of media. These include a variety of prose, dramatic fiction, film and television. It introduces students to genre theory and the conventions of various genres.

You will produce a varied portfolio of work that applies the concepts and techniques introduced in the module. You will begin to develop critical skills through analyses of a variety of readings, as well as editorial input into the work of other students. You will also increase your own self-reflexivity through a written analysis of your voice and creative process.

The foundational skills introduced in Forms & Genre will be used and developed throughout the Creative and Professional Writing degree.

Contextual Studies (Creative Writing)
 

Technique 1: Creative Writing

In this module, you will establish and develop specialised skills for Creative Writing. It will introduce you to a range of writing and reading strategies and techniques by examining critical/ theoretical approaches and imaginative texts. You will also participate in workshops exploring and developing writing practices.

Professional life: Mental Wealth - Agency 1

Developing the key psychological and physical determinants of human performance is increasingly critical for successful graduate-level employment, entrepreneurship and career progression in the 4th industrial revolution.

This module will provide students hoping to work in the creative industries with the opportunity to learn and apply the full range of skills, competencies and experience required for successful progression into in a range of potential future career areas.

Students will learn about conventions and expectations in the creative industries, focussing on areas specific to their programme of study. They will also advance their own personal professional development through taught and workshop activities, and explore possible strategies to further develop their reflective skills and self-awareness.

Students will have opportunity to select an in-house microbusiness to join in the role of 'Apprentice'. In this position they will focus on the importance of research in the creative industries. Students will practice key methods including digital and other research and qualitative methods used in industry today, including trends, news coverage and customer reviews. Students will also learn the conventions of research and analysis in order to develop a pitch or proposal in response to a client brief.

Documentary 1: Documentary and Representation (Creative Writing)

The module equips students with an understanding of how to engage with a wide range of themes through documentary forms. The module provides a context for documentary practice and problematises categories of representation, notions of 'truth' and 'realism' and facilitates civic engagement and involvement with the East London community.

Technique 2: Poetry Forms & Structures

This module will introduce you to a range of poetic writing, including both traditional and non-traditional forms and poetry as it relates to mixed media, mixed genre; it will also explore the use of language outside of the restrictions of conventional forms. You will be provided with a supportive and creative context in which to explore, experiment with and develop your language skills, style and voice.

Year 2

CORE MODULES
 

Long Form & Hybridity
Subject to validation.

Introduction to scriptwriting

This module introduces you to the script in a variety of forms. It explores the script's function as a technical document, written by and for professionals. It discusses the various elements that scripts for different media require.

You will produce a portfolio of work in which you will apply the concepts and techniques introduced in the module to various scriptwriting styles. You will hone their critical skills through analyses of a variety of readings, as well as editorial input into the work of other students. You will also increase your own self-reflexivity through a written analysis of their voice and creative process.

The skills introduced in this module will be developed in the Script Development module in the second term.

Copywriting and Writing for Social Media

This module will introduce students to the theory and practice of copywriting to students. They will explore a broad range of copywriting briefs and examine the issues involved in the production of good copy. The module will provide a supportive and creative context in which students can experiment with, develop, and refine their writing and copywriting skills, and develop a good understanding of professional industry contexts in which they are employed.

Signs and Symbols

This module explores the use of symbolism in fiction, drama and poetry. Symbolism in literature, as well as on stage and in audio and visual media, lends additional meaning to an action, setting, or object. This module discusses how choices regarding symbolism contribute to narrative voice and enhance the mood and meaning of a creative piece.

Topics include an introduction to semiotics, symbol webs, metaphor, mise en scene, simile, imagery, allegory and archetype. The module explores ways to employ symbolism in prose and poetry, as well as audio and visual scripts.

Students will gain not only a theoretical understanding of symbolism, but also experiment with ways to make symbolism work within their own writing.

Mental Wealth: Professional life: Agency 2

Best learning experiences follow a 'learning by doing' approach followed by reflection and assimilation. Building upon the competencies and skills identified at level 4, this module supports effective professional development through practical experience.

You will work on live project briefs to produce media content which is informed by appropriate research in the field of study.

Professional understandings and skills sets will be furthered through practical work enabling you to strengthen key graduate skills such as teamwork, organisation skills, digital skills, effective communication, and professionalism.

Through reflective practice, you will evaluate your ongoing progress as a learner and as a practising professional.

Script Development

This module builds on the knowledge gathered in Introduction to Scriptwriting. It takes the student through the script development process, from initial idea to final product. It looks in detail at structures and templates for a variety of media, and ways of creating characters capable of driving the plot. It examines technical forms and formats, as well as the scripting and rewriting process.

Students will produce successive drafts of a script, employing the scriptwriting concepts and techniques introduced in the module. They will hone their critical skills through analyses of a variety of readings, as well as editorial input into the work of other students. They will also increase their own self-reflexivity through a written analysis of their voice and creative process.

Practice as Research/Research Methods
Subject to validation.

Year 3

CORE MODULES

Book Publishing 1: Content

Book Publishing 1 examines theory and practice in several modes of creative writing, at an advanced level. These include poetry, screenwriting, fiction, creative non-fiction and playwriting. Through refinement of skills and advancement of practice, students will specialise in particular forms, and will be expected to demonstrate professional standards in their writing. Students will prepare work for publication, which will form the material for use in Book Publishing 2.

Transmedia and Digital Futures

In this module, you will examine various theories both on transmedia storytelling as well as on complex narratives that underpin these types of intercompositional narratives, analysing the impact of convergence culture on the way in which we produce and consume media.

The module encourages you to employ experimental and imaginative approaches to concept, process and final realisation of your projects - skills essential to the creation of digital artworks and to the creative industries in general. It also provides you with a greater awareness of the creative context in which to locate their work. You will produce a transmedia narrative working across multiple platforms and formats, including but not limited to video, sound, music, animation, and photography.

Book Publishing 2

Book Publishing 2 takes students through the process of publishing their own work, produced in Term 1, and assisting others in the publication of theirs. Students will work in editorial teams to go through an extensive process of editing their work and that of others; revising their work to editorial input; developing publishing skills such as design and typesetting; and working as part of a team. Every student will end up with a hard copy of their own published work.

Final Major Project: Realisation

Building on the work of FT6021, you will realise your ideas through creative production of original and innovative negotiated concept and outcomes that are relevant to your career aspirations and specialism.

You will have the opportunity to produce a final major project that will primarily rely upon negotiated guidance in order to promote and develop your transition into working life.

You will have the opportunity to identify, develop, reflect upon and finalise projects that will create and build a signature for your exit portfolio.

Advanced Practice & Innovation: Experimental Project
Subject to validation

English language requirements

Overall IELTS score of 5.5 with a minimum of 5.5 in Reading, Writing, Listening and Speaking (or recognised equivalent).

If you do not meet the academic English language requirements for your course, you may be eligible to enrol onto a pre-sessional English programme. The length of the course will depend on your current level of English and the requirements for your degree programme. We offer a 5-week and an 11-week pre-sessional course.

International Full time, 3 years
£13,740 Per year

We're proud of the success stories which keep blossoming from our course. We even have a couple of graduates now going toe-to-toe in the battle of the soaps!

Danielle Jawando, who studied here for both her BA and MA, has recently been writing for major TV soap operas, while talented young playwright Jonny O'Neill had his first EastEnders episode screened in September 2014.

Jawando attributes much of her success to the support she received from her tutors here. "I developed the confidence to try new things and most importantly, to send my work out," she recalls.

As a result, she was shortlisted to write for Emmerdale and had a short story published while still studying at UEL. O'Neill, meanwhile, has seen his debut play, The Royal Duchess Superstore, open on the professional stage in London.

Our course can open all sorts of other workplace doors, too, because it hones and enhances so many transferable skills suitable for different professions. 

Employers want applicants with the sort of communication and writing skills you'll learn here. Our students have gone on to work in areas such as screenwriting, copywriting, teaching and journalism.