Publishing Your Writing Course Descriptor

Course Overview

This course encourages students to think about how they might devise, develop, adapt and disseminate their creative work in contemporary publication contexts. Students will learn how to express themselves across various platforms, generate audience interest in their creative projects and personas, and position their material for different readers and publishers. Students will explore how other writers have adapted both their own and others’ work across different genres and media, and discover what it means to live and work as a versatile creative professional.
Students will put this knowledge into practice by developing and adapting their own material in different ways, by working with different forms such as poetry, short stories, novels, scripts, creative nonfiction and hybrid/experimental work. They will consider how their writing might be revised to suit different publishing platforms, including but not limited to print media, journals, magazines, blogs, podcasts, radio, stage, cinema, television, new media, social media, mobile platforms, online forums and electronic publishing. This course will allow students to explore the professional, commercial and artistic opportunities and limitations of traditional and non-traditional forms of publishing and self-publishing. This will help them navigate and adapt to the material, societal and cultural realities of living and working as a creative writer today.

Learning Outcomes

On successful completion of the course, students will be able to:

Knowledge and Understanding

Subject Specific Skills

Teaching and Learning

This course has a dedicated Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) page with a syllabus and range of learning resources to orientate and engage students in their studies. All scheduled teaching and learning activities for this course are delivered online via the VLE. These may include:

• Lectures
• Readings
• Learning Activities
• Discussion Forums
• Creative Writing Workshops
• Webinars

Faculty also hold regular ‘office hours’, which are opportunities for students to explore ideas, raise questions, or seek targeted guidance or feedback individually.
Students are to attend and participate in all the scheduled teaching and learning activities for this course and to manage their directed learning and independent study.
Indicative total learning hours for this course: 300 – typically including induction, course activities, consolidation or revision and assessment activity hours.

Assessment

Both formative and summative assessment are used as part of this course, with formative opportunities typically embedded within interactive teaching activities delivered via the VLE.

Summative Assessments

Indicative assessment elements:

• Set Exercises typically comprise assessment of students’ editorial contributions during a set period (e.g. in Creative Writing Workshops).
• Portfolio submissions typically comprise at least one original creative work and an accompanying critical or professional practice component.

Further information about the assessments can be found in the Course Syllabus.

Feedback

Students will receive formative and summative feedback in a variety of ways, written (e.g. marked up on assignments, through email or the VLE) or oral (e.g. as part of interactive teaching sessions or in office hours).

Indicative Reading

Note: Comprehensive and current reading lists are produced annually in the Course Syllabus or other documentation provided to students; the indicative reading list provided below is for a general guide and part of the approval/modification process only.

• Barnard, Josie, The Multimodal Writer: Creative Writing Across Genres and Media (Red Globe Press, 2019)
• Carpenter, J.R., The Gathering Cloud (Uniform Books, 2017)
• Doyle, Roddy, The Woman who Walked into Doors (Vintage, 1998)
• Goldsmith, Kenneth, Uncreative Writing: Managing Language in the Digital Age (Columbia University Press, 2011)
• Saunders, George, Tenth of December (Bloomsbury, 2014)
• Thomas, Bronwen, Literature and Social Media (Routledge, 2020)

Indicative Topics

Note: Comprehensive and current topics for courses are produced annually in the Course Syllabus or other documentation provided to students; the indicative topics provided below are used as a general guide and part of the approval/modification process only.

• Traditional publication platforms
• Digital, alternative and emerging publication platforms
• Adapting creative work for different audiences
• Adapting creative work for different platforms
• Adaptation and derivative texts
• Creating a writing persona