BA Honours Creative Writing and Journalism

The BA Creative Writing and Journalism progamme will give you a solid grounding in language and communication across a range of creative and journalistic genres and through a variety of media. You will also explore the worlds of media, journalistic and literary employment.

The first year of the course introduces you to essential creative writing and journalism skills that you can apply across a range of media, including narrative storytelling, finding your voice and exploring character, dialogue and conflict.

In the second year you will have the opportunity to develop your creative strengths in such fields as fiction, scriptwriting (with the opportunity to have your script turned into a shot film by BA Film students), and storytelling for games, as well as to develop and deepen your journalistic knowledge and skills across print, broadcast, online mobile and emergent technologies.

The third year gives you the opportunity to work in-depth on an independent project, as well as to boost your employability through our innovative Entrepreneurship and Work Placement modules.

• Year 1
  • Journalism Skills (30 Credits) - Compulsory This module will teach you the core journalism skills, techniques and knowledge that will lay the foundation for your degree and journalism career. Providing a firm grounding in news gathering, research, news and feature writing, these skills will be applicable to print, broadcast, online, mobile and emergent technologies.
  • What is Journalism? (30 Credits) - Compulsory This module introduces you to key journalism theories, concepts, codes and conventions, both historic and current, and develops your understanding of the news media industry. You will develop your own views and versions of journalism, bridging the link between theory and practice.
  • Character, Conflict and Dialogue (30 Credits) - Compulsory This module will introduce you to key elements in the field of imaginative writing – building characters, writing dialogue, creating and building conflict situations. You will investigate the appropriate forms of character, dialogue and conflict writing for different media – stage, page, screen and radio and develop your skills in collaborative writing for radio and other media. You will also develop your research skills appropriate to the imaginative work in hand.
  • Writing Creatively (30 Credits) - Compulsory This module explores the different ways in which we make sense of the world and communicate with others through creative or professional writing. On this module, you will develop your reading and writing skills through exploration of a wide range of literary or journalistic forms and through writing practice in these forms. It introduces the importance and practice of reflective evaluation of your own and other’s creative work through self and peer review.
• Year 2
  • Multimodal Journalism (30 Credits) - Compulsory Building on skills learned during the first year, this module enables you to apply your skills in news gathering, production and distribution in print, broadcast, online, mobile and emergent technologies across multiple platforms individually and collaboratively. It considers how factors such as monetisation, non-linear design, audience interaction and mode of dissemination affect the journalistic editorial and production process.
  • Political Communication (30 Credits) - Optional This module will introduce you to a range of debates and discussions about the relationship between the media, political actors and audiences/citizens in contemporary society. You will develop your skills in political communications practice, including presentational and deliberative skills, working both independently and as a team.
  • Arts, Lifestyle and Sports Journalism (30 Credits) - Optional Teaching you the knowledge, skills and techniques needed to be an arts, lifestyle and/or sports reporter, this module explores the role of these journalism specialisms in the modern media. You will further develop core journalistic skills (research, reporting, storytelling) and the more specific techniques and approaches required for different specialisms as well as build an understanding of the context and pressures under which arts, lifestyle and sports journalism is produced in the modern media.
  • Storytelling for Games (30 Credits) - Optional This module will provide you with a knowledge of the principles of storytelling in relation to games design as well as the ability to use narrative structures in the design of game worlds. You will develop your ability to apply both game and storytelling knowledge to the creation of an interactive story and develop story language for games design.
  • Fiction: The Short Story (30 Credits) - Optional In this module you will develop your fiction-writing skills in the context of the distinctive aesthetics of the short story, with group study of seminal texts in the history of the modern short story forming a context for work-shopped exercises. You will explore such techniques of fiction as voice, setting and atmosphere, narrative tension, character and dialogue, as foregrounded by the short form, and you will also learn about the distinctive publishing environment for short fiction.
  • Screen Writing for Shorts (30 Credits) - Optional This module will help you to understand the particular demands, constraints and potentials of the short film form. It will help you to understand the significance of story structure, visual storytelling and characterisation in conveying meaning and affect, and how screenplays are written on the page. You will conceive, research and develop a short screen story, write and rewrite a short dramatic script, taking account of and evaluating feedback, including peer group feedback, and evaluate the completed work critically and analytically, formatting your screenplay to industry standards.
• Year 3
  • Working as a Writer (30 Credits) - Compulsory This module enables you to develop skills and practices at an appropriate professional level for the workplace, in industries relevant to the rest of your work in the BA Creative Writing and Journalism programme. It aims to prepare you for possible future career paths in such fields as publishing, the media and journalism, as well as being preparation for the professional publishing and media environment that will form the context for your future activity as writer and journalist.
  • Creative Writing Project (30 Credits) - Compulsory The Creative Writing Project provides you with the opportunity and support to develop a major independent project that can be in any of the genres of creative writing (e.g. fiction, film, play or games script, life writing). You should aim to produce a piece of work that explores your own particular interests and that can be used as a summation of your capabilities (a “calling card”) beyond university.
  • Global Journalism and News Cultures (30 Credits) - Optional This module will introduce you to global journalism as a concept, a way of researching the expanding news media landscape, and of practicing journalism. Throughout the module, you will explore the ethics and nature of journalism that is being created in, and exported by, different countries and compare the approach of journalists, as well as the quality and style of reporting of global news media outlets.
  • Long Form Journalism (30 Credits) - Optional This module enables you to identify and apply relevant critical frameworks to the concept of long-form journalism. You will demonstrate your high level practical skills in the execution of a complex and large-scale project relevant to the field of journalism and develop professional competence in researching, planning and producing long-form journalism.
  • Popular Non-Fiction (30 Credits) - Optional This module develops your understanding of how close reading of non-fiction, including forms such as travel and history writing, biography and memoir, can help develop your own creative writing abilities within these genres. It explores the nature of the self, its presentation in text, and the depiction of other lives, with the aim of helping you use different narrative structures and styles in your own work. The module explores the notion of place and voice in non-fiction writing and aims to give an understanding of how research informs practice.
  • Genre Fiction (30 Credits) - Optional This module will provide you with knowledge and practice of the tropes and subjects of popular fiction, including romance, historical, horror, crime, fantasy, science fiction, with the specific genres covered being agreed in accordance with staff expertise. You will consider a range of texts, such as literature, radio, film and TV and include the emergence of cult video/DVD, developing your ability to recognise the characteristics and requirements of each genre.

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