Bath Spa University

M.A.-Creative Writing

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.
• To understand literary form, style and genre, as relevant to your chosen form of writing
• To acquire a variety of relevant writing techniques, and research techniques to support writing, and adapt them to your particular creative project.
• To 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.
• To receive and give precise and sensitive critical feedback in workshop groups and one-to-one tutorials.
• To respond creatively to feedback provided by tutors and other students, adapting that feedback to your particular vision of your book.
• To understand choices and opportunities relevant to your chosen manuscript, including questions of 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. In trimester two, you’ll take a second workshop module in either prose or poetry.

Context
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. You’ll take a context module in trimester one and another in trimester two.

Manuscript
In trimester three, you’ll take 'The Manuscript', taught by means of one-to-one tutorials. This is the culmination of the course – the book, or substantial part of a book.