Creative Writing Courses
What is Creative Writing?
It means telling a story – using your imagination.
If you do it well, it means working with words to create something entertaining enough for a given group of people to want to read or watch. This can include anything from writing your life story, or the novel you’ve got an idea for, to researching and writing a short article for the local paper or a specialist magazine. Your own fictional short story of a love affair is going to be very different from an account of your father’s or grandfather’s experiences at Dunkirk, but they both need creativity.
Creative writing is both an art and a craft. It involves a certain ‘gift’ and a thoroughly practical approach. You need to make the words work for you to produce a result that grabs the reader’s attention and keeps it until you’ve finished your story. The way in which you keep them with you is your style. Perhaps they like the way you put things. They enjoy your insights. They want to see what happens next.
This course can cover what you want to cover:
- Novels
- Short stories
- Plays
- Screenplays (film scripts)
- TV plays/series
- Magazine/newspaper articles
- Stories for children
Personal tuition
This course is email-based. You’ll need to tell us a bit about yourself, your experience and what you hope to achieve, and send us an example of what you’ve done so far. If you don’t have anything, we’ll set you a short, simple task to get started and see what stage you’re at. From there it will be a series of tutorials. You email us back some work, we appraise it, you move on to the next part.
We cover every stage:
- Coming up with your idea (and trouble-shooting it to see if it’s going to work)
- Who is it aimed at? Is there a market for it?
- Planning – map it all out first or see how it goes?
- Using a true story – advantages and pitfalls
- Deciding on a point of view – who’s telling the story?
- How far into a story should you start?
- Getting started – how to avoid agonising and staring at a blank screen.
- Set the scene or jump straight in?
- Working through problems: what to do if you get bogged down
- How to end it: a big finish? Tie up loose ends? Leave some suspense?
- Selling it: how do you go about getting published? How much money can you expect to make?
- Copyright: know your rights.
Because the course is tailored to your requirements, for each stage you will receive some standard information and advice, plus individual suggestions, as we get to know you and your strengths and weaknesses.
The duration
Can be tailored to suit you. At one stage a week it comes to 12 weeks. If you decide to cover two stages each week and you have time to produce good work in that way, the course will be shorter.
However you decide to do it, you will be a better writer at the end of the course, better equipped to make some money from your work, if that is what you choose to do.
The cost
The course costs £195, payable in advance.
Alternatively, you can pay a £45 deposit and six instalments of £30.