CREATIVE WRITING AND PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE - 2025/6

Module Overview

This module is intended to follow on from previous CW modules and help you develop with an advanced engagement with questions of form and craft. It will concentrate on the practicalities of writing creatively within the context of a broad narrative frame. The focus of the module is on prose fiction and on poetry, as well as helping you produce polished and professional quality work in either or both modes. This module also provides knowledge and advice on the processes of getting published, the workings of the publishing industry and invites reflection on the challenges and opportunities of writing professionally.

 

 

Module provider

Literature & Languages

Module Leader

SZCZEPANIAK Angela (Lit & Langs)

Number of Credits: 15

ECTS Credits: 7.5

Framework: FHEQ Level 6

Module cap (Maximum number of students): N/A

Module Availability

Semester 1

Prerequisites / Co-requisites

None    

Module content

Topics covered are likely to include:

* Mystery and Suspense and how to generate them
* Sentence Structure and its impact on the reader
* Poetry : Appreciating Form
* Poetry: Patterns of Sound
* Advanced Drafting, Redrafting, Editing and Revising
* Allusion, Homage, Parody and Pastiche Endings
* Life as a published writer and the workings of the publishing industry

Assessment pattern

Alternative Assessment

N/A

Assessment Strategy

The assessment strategy is designed to provide you with the opportunity to demonstrate:

* your writing skills creative writing (prose fiction and/or poetry and/or other modes of writing), and your understanding of the context of their work in historical and cultural terms, as well as in terms of other creative writing in the field
* the development of your research skills
* productive and informed critical reflection on both your own creative writing and the critical and secondary material that surrounds it, and/or both the creative process itself and the finished work that has resulted from it

Thus, the summative assessment for this module consists of:

Creative Writing Submission (2400 words) and Self-Reflective Critical Commentary (600 words)
 

Formative assessment and feedback

Verbal feedback in class, written and/or oral feedback on prepared written work and class exercises, written feedback on up to 250 words of work from the module convenor

Module aims

• The module aims to: create a space for creative writing in a variety of professional domains and genres
• provide opportunities for self-reflection and reflections on the writing and production process
• encourage you to think about what and how you might want to write after graduation

Learning outcomes

Methods of Teaching / Learning

The learning and teaching strategy is designed:

To help you hone and develop your creative writing skills

To encourage and enable you to locate literary texts and their critical writing, and/or their creative work in historical and cultural contexts by identifying the connections and references in their own creative or critical writing to relevant theoretical, literary and historical contexts

• To encourage you to reflect on the challenges of writing professionally, and to provide knowledge about the practical and economic realities of contemporary publishing in a variety of fields.


• To help you build on your previous writing experience on previous modules, by developing a personalised revision and editing checklist, specific to you as a writer, based on the patterns of feedback you have received on this and other modules.
   

The learning and teaching methods include:

 2 hour workshops x 11 weeks. Two contact hours per week over Semester 2.  You are expected to read outside classes and to undertake preparatory work in advance for workshops – and to come to workshop sessions having read and prepared to comment thoughtfully and constructively on the work of others.

Indicated Lecture Hours (which may also include seminars, tutorials, workshops and other contact time) are approximate and may include in-class tests where one or more of these are an assessment on the module. In-class tests are scheduled/organised separately to taught content and will be published on to student personal timetables, where they apply to taken modules, as soon as they are finalised by central administration. This will usually be after the initial publication of the teaching timetable for the relevant semester.

Reading list

https://readinglists.surrey.ac.uk
Upon accessing the reading list, please search for the module using the module code: ELI3046

Other information

Surrey's Curriculum Framework is committed to developing graduates with strengths in Employability, Digital Capabilities, Global and Cultural Capabilities, Sustainability and Resourcefulness and Resilience. This module is designed to allow students to develop knowledge, skills and capabilities in the following areas:

It is designed to help build Resilience and Resourcefulness: By encouraging students to share their work in class for verbal feedback and written feedback from peers and tutor, and then to build experience responding in productive ways to feedback. This is both a transferrable skill and a vital professional one for writers (and many other careers). You will be expected to respond thoughtfully, productively, sensitively and in detail to other people’s creative writing. You will also be given practice in thinking carefully and creatively about how to assimilate, respond to and benefit from other people’s written and verbal feedback, and developing habits of resilience which will allow you to do so.

Global and Cultural Capabilities: This is a module explicitly designed to build cultural and global intelligence, presenting you with unfamiliar forms of writing, encouraging you to think historically about literary forms, and introducing you to authors and texts from a diverse range of global cultural backgrounds. As well as introducing you to a wide range of global points of view, we’ll also be discussing our position as writers within a global publishing industry, and the opportunities and challenges which this poses to writers.

Employabilty: This module is designed to provide you with the knowledge and skills to write at a professional level in a variety of modes (prose fiction, poetry, writing for stage and for screen). It is also designed to help you develop their ability to express themselves clearly and precisely and respond in a focused and thoughtful way to the writing and ideas of others – both verbally and on the page. These are skills which employers on the PTY programme have consistently praised in our students and explicitly linked to the programme in PTY placement visits. This module is also designed to improve and broaden your knowledge of different authors, modes of writing and techniques of writing, and to enable you to experiment with some of these modes and techniques yourself. It should also be noted that sensitively and productively phrasing feedback (as you will be expected to do) and responding to it graciously and thoughtfully are also valuable skills in almost any professional line of work!

Programmes this module appears in

Please note that the information detailed within this record is accurate at the time of publishing and may be subject to change. This record contains information for the most up to date version of the programme / module for the 2025/6 academic year.