Journalism and Creative Writing

Do you want to write for a living? This course will help you to develop professional writing skills.

These styles of writing, although different, share a number of characteristics from engaging your reader to writing for a target audience. Creative writers and journalists utilize similar research skills, storytelling, and skills in writing across a range of platforms including web, blogs and media, print, video, audio and multimedia. Studying journalism alongside creative writing will give you opportunities to develop your voice as a writer and a wider potential for publication.

In journalism you will develop professional writing skills with an awareness of the target audience and the legal and ethical framework for publishing. The academic study of journalism involves the development of key journalistic skills including the ability to write a news story, conduct an interview and put together a feature article. Students also conduct an analysis of the differences between types of newspaper and the news values they display, examine major ethical and legal issues pertaining to the practice of journalism in the UK. In the second year there is a broadcasting stream with an emphasis on video, radio, social media and magazine layout and the final year will develop expertise in on-line journalism and writing for stage or screen.

Studying Creative Writing gives you the opportunity to develop your voice as a writer while building up a repertoire of practical skills in devising, editing, revising and submitting your work. You will learn how to analyse a text to understand the effects of the author’s choices, and then implement that understanding into improving your own writing. Across your degree, you will study and create short stories, drama, poetry and creative nonfiction.

You will take modules that examine a range of topics, such as genre writing, young adult fiction, adaptation and publishing. You will have opportunities to participate in co-curricular activities, such as working with museums or school students. Creative Writing is taught in small groups of 15 students, where your work will be workshopped by your peers and your lecturer. The practical analytical and editorial skills you gain are beneficial beyond your degree.