Bath Spa University

MA in Creative Writing

This course includes or offers the following modules.

• Professional Skills
• Prose Workshop 2
• Poetry Workshop 2
• Writing and Gender
• Writing and the Environment
• Writing with a Poet’s Eye
• The Writer and Place
• The Short Story
• Modernism and Postmodernism
• Narrative Non-Fiction
• The Love Story
• Historical Fiction
• Writing Now
• The Manuscript

What you'll learn

Overview

You’ll learn to:

• Plan a manuscript (a novel, collection of short stories, collection of poems, or book of literary non-fiction) and complete it, or a substantial part of it brought to publishable quality or as near as possible.
• Understand literary form, style, and genre, as relevant to your chosen form of writing.
• Acquire a variety of relevant writing techniques, and research techniques to support writing, and adapt them to your particular creative project.
• Understand and respond creatively to questions arising from the subject matter, themes, genres, traditions, and other literary contexts with which your chosen manuscript is engaged.
• Receive and give precise and sensitive critical feedback in workshop groups and one-to-one tutorials.
• Respond creatively to feedback provided by tutors and other students, adapting that feedback to your particular vision of your book.
• Understand choices and opportunities relevant to your chosen manuscript, including questions about how to place your work, and the role of agents, publishers, and editors.

Course structure

Workshops
The first workshop module, Professional Skills, provides intensive group discussion and some plenary lectures. You’ll bring short pieces of writing to small workshop classes led by a tutor. There are separate groups for prose and poetry. You’ll submit a manuscript proposal halfway through the module. All students take this module in their first trimester. The second workshop module, either in prose or poetry, taken later in the course, continues the work in the same way. By this time, students have chosen their manuscript project.

Context modules
Each context module explores connections between your creative writing and the wider world as represented by a theme or genre. Seminars are divided between considering set texts and workshopping your creative writing. The set texts are examined from the point of view of practical lessons that the writer can learn. Full-time students take a context module in trimester one and another in trimester two. Part-time students take one in trimester two and one in trimester four.

Manuscript module
This is the culmination of the course – the book, or substantial part of a book. It is taught using one-to-one tutorials. Full-time students take it in trimester three; and part-time students in trimester six.

How will I be assessed?

You’ll be assessed entirely by coursework: mainly creative writing, plus two short essays, a manuscript proposal, and a short commentary on the manuscript in progress.

How will I be taught?

You’ll be taught in group workshops and seminars, one-to-one tutorials, and plenary lectures.