Online Creative Writing Course

This stimulating course will develop your ability to write a good story and to think more critically about your writing. You will learn the basics of different kinds of writing - magazine and newspaper columns, short stories, books - while improving your basic writing skill. Your development will be guided by qualified and experienced tutors. No matter what your current writing ability, if you put in the effort, you will become a better and more confident writer. Some students have been published even before finishing the course!

• Develop passion, creativity and writing technique
• Discover what publishers and readers want
• Become a successful, creative writer.
• Self Paced, 100 hour, creative writing course

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 45 books. Tutors are exceptionally well qualified, with university degrees in writing or journalism and more than 10 years experience in writing and publishing. 

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. Using Consise Clear Language
   • 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.

Request your free information pack today!