creative writing & prose

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The course will follow the process of read, write, revise, edit, which is ideal for developing creative writing.

You will undertake numerous writing exercises and tasks, using a range of stimuli, themes, styles and starting points. You will look at:

• Inspiration and ideas
• Characters
• Dialogue
• Creating the world of your story
• Types of Narrator and the writer's point of view
• Shaping and Refining a story
• Writing your own stories

At the end of each course you will have a small writing portfolio, including a main piece of writing that is finished and you proud of. You should also have ideas for further stories.

Essentially the course structure is similar for all Key Stages, although both the materials and approach are altered to suit the age group.

The Key Stage 2 course will produce work that may be shorter in length than the others, and the stimuli used is adjusted to be appropriately challenging and interesting for each. 

Again, the course structure is similar for both the Getting Started course and the Developing Your Writing course. The main differences are depth and building on the foundations you will already have in place. Also, at the end of the Developing Your Writing course you will have a longer piece of story writing completed, and several pieces at the end of the Advanced Writing course.

Our recommendation is for all young writers to undertake the Getting Started course first of all, even if they have prior experience of creative writing. It may be that they have undertaken a number of stories and taken creative writing classes before, but the course builds specifically from the main foundations of storytelling to the creation of a well formed piece of writing, and ensures nothing is missed. Therefore we recommend this as the starting point for all writers.

You can however start at Stage two - Developing Your Writing - if you believe that you have that solid foundation already in place.

Advanced Writing can only be taken once the Developing Your Writing course has been completed.

The course has 10 sessions, with each session released at the start of a week. 

You then have the week to work through the content, which means you can do so at your own pace and at any time that suits you.

You will then complete and submit the assignment on the forum by the session deadline. The majority of weeks this will be a practical piece of work that needs to be uploaded to the forum.

That is completely up to you! However, the more you put in, the more you will get out.

The course is essentially a minimum of one hour per week in terms of the material for the session, but there is always additional work and assignments set, as well as extension tasks and interaction with the forum.

You should also be spending time on your writing, with a piece of writing set each week which should be worked on after the session.

Each week there are 7 steps to undertake:

1. Complete the session. The session materials come in the form of videos, podcasts, written notes, and extracts to read and work on.

2. You complete the assignment set - usually a practical piece of work.

3. You share this assignment with the rest of the group and the tutors.

4. You receive feedback from the other people in your group as well as giving feedback to others.

5. Your tutors give you detailed, professional feedback.

6. You reflect on the assignment and your feedback, and share / discuss what you have learnt.

7. You review and improve your work using all of what you have learnt and the feedback you have received from the previous steps.

Yes! This is a key part of your development.

You will receive feedback from tutors on a weekly basis, as well as from other members of the group. You will also receive detailed and extended feedback about your monologues when these are submitted at the end of the course.

Our tutors are experienced writers with MA level Creative Writing experience and full PGCE teaching qualifications. 

At points in the course you may have questions that you would like to ask your tutors. To make this easy for you, we have clear set times when a tutor is online and can be asked any questions you may have so that an immediate response is given, as well as questions being able to be posted on the forum for tutors to answer.

Our coaches are all well qualified, both as teachers and as experts in their disciplines. They are all fully DBS checked to ensure care and safety.

The nature of the work being recorded and set as assignments means that parents and guardians can have full access to all that is being sent out to students.