Writing & Literature

About Creative Writing Courses

Considering a Creative Writing Course? 

It is an excellent idea to do a creative writing course if you want to learn more about the craft of creative writing. Do you love to read? Enjoy a captivating storyline? Write in your spare time for fun? A career in creative writing may be ideal for you. A creative writing course will provide you with all the necessary skills and knowledge required to work in creative writing. Alternatively, the course will also help those who wish to do creative writing as a hobby. The good news is there are tons of creative writing courses currently available.

Areas of Study 

It is important to have an idea of what a creative writing course will cover before you run to apply for one. In a creative writing course for beginners, you should expect to learn about how to come up with ideas, how to develop characters, how to set the scene and make use of the five senses, how to use dialogue, structure, plot, point of view and tense and the different kinds of creative writing and where you can submit your work. In a more advanced, intermediate creative writing course, you can expect to learn about character and story structure, time and pace, juxta positioning, editing and flash fiction, the importance of engaging a reader’s emotion and symbolism and suspense. You may learn other things; however, these are the basics you can expect to learn from a creative writing course.  

Word of Caution – They Won’t Teach You How to Write 

Just a word of caution, the purpose of a creative writing course is not to teach someone who does not know how to write. It is not the kind of course where you will suddenly learn how to write. You need to come in with good writing skills that can be improved. The whole point of a creative writing course is to enhance the writing skills of people who already know how to write and want to improve at it. It is essential that you know this before applying for a course. 

Afterall, you could waste your time and hard-earned money thinking you will suddenly be taught how to write like James Joyce when you are not good at writing. Remember to research. For those who do not know how to write, there are other options for you to learn. Creative writing does not equal teaching writing, it means teaching a specific kind of writing to help those who already do it enhance their writing further for the chance of being published. 

Career Opportunities 

Completing a creative writing course is a great thing to do as it can open up quite a few career opportunities. In the field of writing, it is not necessary to have qualifications for the most part, however, it always helps in getting jobs and in knowing what you are doing. You could work as a freelance writer, writing for blogs, news publications and various other outlets. There are also opportunities to progress. You may realise you love creative writing and want to learn about more forms of writing such as journalistic writing or report writing. You could study a third-level degree in journalism, English studies, communications, public relations, marketing and so on. There are many industries where writing can be incorporated and therefore, doing a creative writing course is very valuable.  

If you’re serious about doing a creative writing course, check out courses near you in the Nightcourses.co.uk national course finder.