Postgraduate

In Corsham

Price on request

Description

  • Type

    Postgraduate

  • Location

    Corsham

  • Duration

    1 Year

Facilities

Location

Start date

Corsham (Wiltshire)
See map
Corsham Court

Start date

On request

About this course

Entry Requirements

We offer places on the basis of our assessment of the student's quality, potential and commitment as a writer and their ability to benefit from the course. Normally, but not invariably, a student will have a degree.

Applicants will need to submit a short piece of creative writing for young people with their application form: for example, six poems or two short stories or not more than 20 pages of a novel.

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Course programme

This specialist creative writing MA course enlists the expertise of our team of published writer-lecturers, five of whom are currently published in the field of children's writing. It is supported by visiting speakers from the children's publishing world, including agents, editors and publishers and authors.

Course Structure and Content

The course is for writers for children of all ages, from the picture-book age through to adolescent and 'crossover' writing which aims at markets among adults as well as young people. Though prose fiction is likely to be the main area studied, students will have the chance to look at writing in all forms, including poetry, picture book texts and non-fiction.

The course helps and encourages students to create a significant body of writing, with practical plans for its place in the real world of publishing. It is based on the principle that most writers learn and benefit from working closely with their fellow writers, in a disciplined supportive setting, and with tutors who are practising and published writers in their field.

The basic spark and commitment to writing comes from you. What you will do with tutors and your fellow writers in a workshop situation is learn to see your work through objective eyes and to think clearly about the different strategies you might adopt. You learn from each other's mistakes and successes as well as your own. You will be urged to try things out - experiment - and understand what happens through discussion. Your ideas might have to be your own, but being among other people who talk, play and live with writing stimulates ideas in you that you don't expect.

Writing Workshops

In the first semester's writing workshop you will explore a variety of formats and approaches, gaining a sense of the different age- ranges and forms. This is also an introduction to the writing workshop experience which is the heart of the course. In the second semester's workshop you will be asked to choose your area of writing, and use the workshop's feedback and encouragement to explore it in more depth. Full-time students take one writing workshop in Semester One and one in Semester Two. Part-time students take one workshop each year.

Context Modules


Each full-time student takes one of these in the first semester and one in the second semester. The first semester's context module, Writing for Young People: Forms, Ages and Stages, is concerned with the writer's relationship with their audience, a sense of the history of and issues raised by children's writing. The second semester's module looks at Contemporary Children's Publishing, and aims to give a realistic grasp of the choices open to new writers in the field. Part-time students take one of these context modules in each year of study.

Manuscript


This is the development of a manuscript as near to publishable quality as possible. It is supported by tutorials throughout the year. It may be a novel, a book of stories, a collection of poems or picture book texts.

Teaching methods and resources The course is modular and offered for full and part-time study. Part -time students take the same course over a two-year period, taking one module each semester. Students complete four taught modules (two writing workshops and two context modules) plus a manuscript (double module).

Modules are normally taught via tutor-led writing workshops, organised in 11 weekly three-hour sessions on the Newton Park campus. The manuscript is taught via one-to-one tutorials, working with a tutor with particular knowledge of your field of work. Throughout the course, there will be special events to bring in writers to discuss their work, literary agents, editors and speakers with practical advice on publishing.

Assessment Methods

The assessed coursework for each Writing Workshop is a folder of creative writing. For each Context Module the coursework is an essay of approximately 2,500 words and a folder of creative responses. The manuscript is 35,000-40,000 words, or the equivalent in poetry or picture book texts.

Course Length

One year full-time.

Two years part-time.

Writing for Young People

Price on request