Creative Writing

Become a successful, creative writer.

If you love writing and want to improve your skills, network with other writers, and get personal guidance from a team of professional writers, this course is for you. Our principal and staff have authored over 150 magazines and 40 books. Tutors are exceptionally well qualifed, with university degrees in writing or journalism and more than 10 years experience in writing and publishing. 

Lesson Structure

There are 10 lessons in this course:

1. Introduction
   • What is creative writing
   • What’s different about creative writing
   • Information and creativity
   • Creative genres
   • Forms of Writing
   • Form
   • Structure
   • Purpose
   • Creative Writing resources
   • What is needed for success
   • The business of writing
   • Getting published
   • Self publishing
   • Vanity publishing
   • Terminology.
2. Basic Creative Writing Skills
   • Words and their proper use
   • Types of language
   • Informative language
   • Persuasive language
   • Imaginative language
   • Literal language
   • Figurative language
   • Formal language
   • Colloquial language
   • Parts of language (nouns, pronouns, verbs, adverbs, prepositions, plurals, possessive nouns & pronouns, gender, adjectives, articles)
   • Common grammatical errors (fragmented sentences, run on sentences, comma splices, dangling modifiers).
   • Run on sentences
   • Irregular verbs
   • Whom or who
   • Pronouns and Antecedents
   • Punctuation
   • Creating and critiquing
   • Generating ideas
   • Developing ideas
   • Narrative theory
   • Storyline
   • Narrative structure
   • Settings or scenes
   • Mood or atmosphere
   • Time
   • Voice
   • Point of view
   • Creative reading.
3. Concise and Clarity
   • Making things clear
   • Slice of life fiction
   • Conciseness and Succinctness
   • Understanding ambiguity
   • Causes of ambiguity
   • Doubt and ambiguity
   • Hinge points and ambiguity
   • Defamiliarisation.
4. Planning What You Write
   • Writing routine
   • Establishing a theme
   • Organising ideas
   • Paragraphing
   • Writing a synopsis
   • Titles
   • Developing objectives.
5. Writing Fiction
   • Elements
   • Clues
   • Signs
   • Common errors
   • Scope or Range
   • Theme problems
   • Authenticity problems
   • Tone problems.
6. Writing Non-fiction
   • Creative non fiction
   • Scope
   • Developing ideas
   • Narration
   • Story line
   • Deduction
   • Induction
   • Classical Development
   • Chronological development
   • Analogy
   • Cause and effect
   • Classification
   • Comparison and contrast
   • Definition
   • Analysis
   • Developing a profile
   • Interviews.
7. Newspaper Writing
   • What to write
   • Scope
   • News values
   • Writing guidelines
   • Regular columns
   • Fillers.
8. Writing for Magazines
   • Scope of magazine writing
   • What publishers want
   • Magazine articles
   • Travel writing
   • Writing for public relations
   • Selling your work.
9. Writing Books
   • Themes
   • Consistency
   • Believability
   • Variety
   • Getting started
   • Getting a contract
   • Book publishing
   • Non fiction books
   • Fact finding.
10. Special Project
    • Organising a portfolio to sell yourself.

Each lesson culminates in an assignment which is submitted to the school, marked by the school's tutors and returned to you with any relevant suggestions, comments, and if necessary, extra reading.

Aims

• Describe elements and forms of creative writing.
• Develop skills that will help you generate, evaluate and communicate ideas. Discuss the functions of clear writing, and the art of revealing and concealing in writing.
• Establish theme and structure as planning tools.
• Identify and discuss various forms of fiction writing and publishing opportunities.
• Analyse different non-fiction genres to determine key elements and strategies.
• Analyse different forms of creative writing commonly found in newspapers.
• Analyse magazine articles to determine what makes a good feature article.
• Discuss the main elements of book writing, including theme, organisation, and weaving different narrative threads into a unified whole.
• Prepare a portfolio of creative writing ready for submission and of future ideas.

What You Will Do

• Analyse three texts to identify their genres, describe their layout, and any key elements;
• Locate a vanity publisher and a well-known publisher and obtain information on their submitting requirements;
• Write part of a newspaper feature article in three different ways, using three different types of language to create different impressions;
• Critique a piece of your own writing (250 words or more), noting its good points, its weaknesses;
• Develop one short scene for three different storylines, letting the setting, characters, dialogue and action show what is happening, what might have gone before, and what might follow;
• Make notes on two authors' uses of concealing and revealing (transparency and ambiguity), and analyse their effectiveness in each case;
• Describe a place or person in your life from two completely different perspectives;
• Rewrite an assignment in a different voice;
• Use defamiliarisation to make a common object appear mysterious, or dangerous, or alien;
• Discuss the organisation of texts, considering why the authors might have organised their texts this way, and discuss how the structures contribute to the overall effectiveness of the text;
• Write a first draft in 3 hours, without editing;
• Edit the draft for structure, clarity, flow of ideas, content, mood, voice etc.;
• Edit 3 items of your writing (include one short story) for clarity and succinctness; explain your changes;
• Research likely publishers for one of your stories and submit it;
• Construct outlines of fiction stories using the first and last sentences of published works;
• Conceive different non-fiction writing projects for specific publishers, and explain your choices;
• Write three outlines for non-fiction pieces, modeled on the outlines of your three creative writing readings;
• Interview someone in preparation for writing a profile on that person. Explain why you think that person might be of interest to others.