MA in the Teaching and Practice of Creative Writing

3 February 2022

Ask not what your writers’ group can do for you…

Based on over two decades experience of running a scriptwriters group in Bristol, this post explores the expectations organisers and members need to bring to get the most from participating in a writers’ group. Starting with assurances that writers should feel themselves neither imposters in a group nor superior to its other members regardless of their level of experience, it continues by outlining the scope of the task that organisers take on in running group activities. The post then finds that giving and receiving feedback is a two-way process requiring positive attitudes on both sides and looks at evidence from a study that showed that active debate and criticism produces the most creative outcomes.

1 July 2007

‘Nobody knows anything’

First published in July 2007’s edition of ScriptWriter magazine, this article explores the benefits of university scriptwriting courses. It concludes that students need to keep in mind that these courses are not necessarily the gateway to a scriptwriting career.

26 April 1995

Game On: Creative Writing as an Academic Discipline

Establishing that the construction of an academic discipline is a process of institutionalisation, this essay draws parallels between creative writing and the academic study of English literature. Through a historical description of progressive literary theorising, the work aims to demonstrate that theory is ultimately a redundant, circular process. The conclusion posits that creative writing and literary theory exist in opposition, asserting that creative writing tutors should resist the institutionalisation processes which befell ‘literature’.

26 April 1995

The Name of Action: ‘How to’ books and the aspiring writer

This work approaches writing manuals through a consideration of the ways in which they might instruct and influence the inexperienced writer. Using a number of ‘how to’ books as illustrations, the essay divides the writing process into the technical and the creative, looking particularly at how these divisions interact. The work concludes with a consideration of the relationship between books on creative writing and proactive experience in the form.

18 January 1995

The Future in Fragments: The writer and interactive multimedia

This essay examines the influence of emerging media technologies on the way in which writers structure their work. It firstly explores the role of texts as artefacts building on some of the conclusions drawn within the previous essay. Through a consideration of contemporary approaches to the structuring of texts, looking particularly at works for film and television, it surmises how the possibility of audience interaction might influence this process in the future.

18 January 1995

‘What light through yonder window breaks?’: The role of media and the work of Dennis Potter

Through the work of the late television playwright Dennis Potter, this essay sets out to examine the relationship between writer and medium. Questioning the extent to which the various media influence the writing process in terms of both political economy and technological restraints, the work’s principal focus — television — is compared with other media including printed texts. The essay concludes with an assessment of Potter’s skill in using his chosen medium to articulate his own ‘individual voice’.