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Creative Writing BA(Hons)

Experiment with all forms of writing to develop your writing voice.

Key details
Location
Falmouth Campus
Course duration
3 years / 4 years
Attendance
Full-time / Placement year
UCAS code
W890/PY45

Course overview

You’ll explore non-fiction, poetry, fiction, children’s literature and writing for digital games – learning to draft, edit and pitch your creations. By working on literary, community and industry-engaged projects, a final portfolio and an online profile, you’ll also develop industry-level confidence and outstanding creative work. You’ll flourish as a writer, surrounded by inspirational staff and beautiful natural spaces.

You will:

  • Produce illustrated anthologies, organise mini-festivals or work with a business as part of a collaborative project
  • Attend our guest lecture series, where you’ll have the chance to build contacts within all facets of the literary world
  • Have the opportunity to attend and participate in literary events such as Falmouth Book Festival and the North Cornwall Book Festival
  • Take inspiration from The Lighthouse – the glorious workspace at the heart of our community – which hosts everything from skills and craft workshops to board game sessions, literary quizzes and poetry readings
  • Use the stunning natural surroundings as inspiration for the writing process
  • Contribute to a vibrant, thriving writing community through FalWriting, our student-led online magazine, or by reading your work at our literary evenings

The placement year pathway for this course is new for entry year 2023 and is subject to validation.

Course details

On this Creative Writing degree, you'll have the opportunity to gain a BA(Hons) degree over three years or study Creative Writing BA(Hons) with a placement year option.

This Creative Writing degree seeks to capture and analyse the most vital contemporary writing (across all formats and media) within the context of a rich literary, historical and theoretical past.

You'll learn, debate and create literary work under the guidance of industry professionals, whether in The Lighthouse, our state-of-the-art campus facilities, or any of our immediate and beautiful natural spaces.

By customising your learning journey you will fully maximise your creative potential. Find your writing voice and focus on your strengths. Make personal connections with industry and community partners through collaborative projects, which will springboard your professional journey from university to your desired industry.

BA(Hons) Creative Writing course video

The first year of the degree gives you a grounding in the basics of creative writing, english literature and publishing – all key areas for aspiring writers to be familiar with. But along with the introduction you need, this Creative Writing BA also challenges and breaks the norms of most creative writing degrees with modules like Exploding the Canon: Writing Then and Now and Breaking the Rules: Remix and Writing Back. Each week, you'll have a mix of lectures, workshops and tutorials.

Modules

Writing: Craft and Contexts

Writing: Craft and Contexts explores the practice of writing as a discipline and a craft and asks you to debate ideas about writing, authorship, genre, creativity and audience.

Breaking the Rules: Remix and Writing Back

A challenging, radical and 'breaking the rules' creative writing module, which covers remix and writing back in theory and practice.

Exploding the Canon: Writing Then & Now

How do the literatures of the past infuse the fictions of the present and what do these literatures reveal about us as we are now and us as we once were?

Literatures of Revolution

From the revolutionary ideas of Darwin's theories of evolution to postcolonial revelations, LGBTQI+ movements and the #MeToo phenomena, literature and other textual forms reflect and create society. How do contemporary notions revolutionise texts and how do texts inform revolutionary ideas?

Publishing Cultures

In this module, you'll encounter publishing as a literary and cultural tradition that is dynamic and in a constant state of flux. You will consider the role of technology on the production and dissemination of written texts in the contemporary world.

Publishing Studio: Technologizing the Word

A practical and intermedia publishing module, which might include book design, zine making, performance and exhibition as publication and screen-based media.

This year is all about narrowing down to your specialisation. Want to be a screenwriter? There's a module for that. Want to write for games? There's a module for that too. You can take modules in poetry, creative non-fiction or radio and theatre. You'll take two core modules, but otherwise you'll create your own personalised Creative Writing degree, focusing on your specific interests.

You will progress to higher levels of analysis and creation, honing your skills as a writer and a critic. You will learn how to research, plan, pitch and build a profile as a writer.

Modules

Writing Project: Making Your Voice Heard

Cut through the noise: get the skills you need in researching, planning, pitching, building a profile or performing resistant alternatives to work as a writer.

Post-Digital Content

Working closely with live, department-based digital media projects such as FalWriting, you'll get to experience what it's like to be an industry-quality practitioner.

Optional modules

Screenwriting
Poetry
Games
Satire & Scandal
Fiction
Creative Non-Fiction
Radio & Theatre
Magic and the Impossible

You can choose to take an optional placement year after your second year on a three-year programme.

You’ll be responsible for finding your own placement, with support from the RealWORKS employability team. 

Choosing this option will enhance your industry experience and skills while studying. 

How you’ll study during your placement year 

You’ll spend time working in a professional context, as part of a business or organisation. This can be in one role, or up to three, and must be for a minimum of 24 weeks. 

You’ll develop in-demand workplace skills, deepen your insight into industry and grow your network of contacts, all of which could help you get ahead in your career after graduation. 

Throughout this year, you’ll develop a portfolio of work that includes critical self-reflection on what has been learned from the experience. You’ll be required to evidence your experiences, the skills you’ve learned and your professional growth. 

The final year of your Creative Writing degree is a culmination of the tools and knowledge you picked up in years one and two. At this level, you will be working on two major 40-credit modules. The first, Collaborative Project, gives you the chance to work on real-world collaborations, for example with community groups, sound projects, work placements, and writing projects. Past students have created podcasts, poetry collections, and a range of community projects with partners such as Mind, the National Trust and others.

The second module, Portfolio, allows you to create a sustained piece of work that you can continue or begin to pitch after graduation. For the portfolio, you have weekly half-hour tutorials with your supervisor, giving you a close focus on your own writing. You can still choose optional modules in the first study block, and in the second we ask you to consider experimentation and adaptation.

Modules

Collaborative Project

In this module you'll consider the writer's role as part of a creative eco-system, and/or literature's role in the creative economy through working on a live collaborative project. The project can be a placement in the writing-related industries, a case study or live brief with a business (for example, literary festivals, creative agencies, publishing houses, the heritage sector), or a collaborative project with peers culminating in an event performance or piece of creative practice.

Portfolio

You'll write an independent extended piece of creative writing or collection of creative pieces in a genre, form, topic of your choosing.

Experiment and Adaption

Engage with some of the limits of textuality, testing the boundaries of understanding, meaning and communication. By looking at how texts can be remediated, how they morph and repeat, you'll analyse how texts sit within the time and place of their production, but also how they can innovate and shift.

Optional modules

We Have Never Been Human
Crime & Dark Fiction
Children & Young Adult

The modules above are those being studied by our students, or proposed new ones. Programme structures and modules can change as part of our curriculum enhancement and review processes. If a certain module is important to you, please discuss it with the Course Leader.

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How you'll learn

On this Creative Writing degree, you'll work on live briefs set by creative industry partners, and learn from lectures and workshops with our guest speakers and Writers in Residence.

On top of your regular lectures, seminars, workshops and self-directed learning, you'll get plenty of time with our staff and the chance for frequent one-to-one tutorials. You'll also have the opportunity to contribute to our student writing journal.

At Falmouth, we use a 'digitally enhanced learning & teaching' approach. Your experience will always be predominantly in-person, including seminars, tutorials and studio teaching, with some, more targeted elements, being online either live (synchronous) or pre-recorded (asynchronous). You can read more here.

How you'll be assessed

100% of your assessment will be coursework. 

Assessment methods

  • Coursework and e-learning exercises.
  • Live creative industry briefs.
  • Final-year creative writing portfolio.

Staff

You'll be taught by published writers and academics from fields like screenwriting, radio, theatre, contemporary poetry, digital texts, writing for games, writing and environment, fiction and non-fiction, publishing and print culture, and children's and young adult writing.

Some members of staff only teach on specific modules, and your course might not feature every staff member who teaches on the course.

Dr David Devanny

Course Leader, BA(Hons) Creative Writing

OverviewDavid is a lecturer and PhD candidate at Falmouth University. He is a poet and&nbs...

Dr David Devanny
Dr Jennifer Young staff picture

Dr Jennifer Young

Head of Writing and Journalism

Jennifer Young came to Falmouth in 2019 to take up the post of Head of Writing and Journalism. She o...

Dr Jennifer Young

Dr Luke Thompson

Course Leader, MA Professional Writing

Luke is a writer of poetry and non-fiction and the founding editor of Guillemot Press. His inte...

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Dr Ruth Heholt staff picture

Dr Ruth Heholt

Dr Ruth Heholt, Associate Professor of Dark Economies and Gothic Literature

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John Finnegan staff profile

John Finnegan

Module Leader, MA Writing for Script & Screen

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Rupert Loydell

Senior Lecturer, English & Writing

Rupert Loydell is Senior Lecturer in the School of Writing and Journalism at Falmouth University, th...

Rupert Loydell

Dr Eoin Murray

Lecturer, Creative Writing BA(Hons)

Eoin Murray is a Welsh writer, game scripter, and ludo-narratologist from Bangor in North Wales curr...

Dr Eoin Murray

Dr Marshall Moore

Course Leader and Senior Lecturer

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Dr Marshall Moore

Facilities

  • Digital labs, lecture theatres and seminar rooms.
  • Libraries housing 140,000 books, 17,000 DVD and video titles, and exhaustive electronic and journal resources.
  • Printmaking studio with a range of printmaking techniques from screen-printing to lithography and monotyping.
  • Digital printing and reprographics.
  • The Lighthouse: a beautifully appointed room designed to be a social space for students and alumni to meet, collaborate and relax.
  • The Shed is a space designed for focused, individual work for writing and journalism students.
  • IT suites and technical workshops for Adobe InDesign and other digital tools.
  • Extensive library facilities, including archive and special collections, specialist poetry collections, the Cornish Performance Archives, Chris Brooks Collection of Victorian Culture, and Patrick Gale author archive.
  • The Soundhouse hosts state of the art audio recording and editing facilities. Specialist technical support is provided.
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SoWJ Newsroom through window lecturer talking

Media Equipment and Facilities

Our industry-level facilities offer everything you need to practice and produce animation, film, TV,...

Media Equipment and Facilities
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Penryn library group study area

Library Facilities

Offering extensive collections, our two libraries provide a wealth of digital resources, magazines, ...

Library Facilities
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Sports Centre - Outside
Sports Centre

Sports Centre

Our Sports Centre, on Penryn Campus, includes a spacious gym with up to 90 of the latest, new statio...

Sports Centre

Careers

Our Creative Writing graduates have worked as:

  • Authors
  • Lecturers
  • Director at Bristol Old Vic Young Company
  • Web Content Editor at TorFX, Cornwall
  • Creative Developer at Brand Institute, Miami
Adrian Martin poses as he signs at book
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Graduate Adrian Martin has just published his second book Stone Ruins and City Smoke and is currently signed to two deals with Dark Edge Press and Spellbound Books - find out Falmouth's creative community helped him do it. 

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How to apply

Apply via UCAS

Ready to join us? You can apply through UCAS. You'll need to reference the course and University code (F33).

Apply now

Applying as an international student? 

International students can apply for a course through UCAS, via an agent or directly with the university. For more information about how to apply as an international student, visit our international applications page.

International applications

Course route UCAS code
Creative Writing BA(Hons) three year degree W890
Creative Writing BA(Hons) with placement year PY45

We consider all applications on their own individual merit and potential. We invite all applicants to an interview day or audition to give them the opportunity to demonstrate this along with what inspires and motivates them in their field. Applicants will also be able to show their portfolio or give a performance depending on the course. We welcome applications from all subject backgrounds, whether you’ve specialised in STEM, the arts or humanities.  

Course route Entry requirements
BA/BSc(Hons) three year degree 104 – 120 UCAS Tariff points
BA/BSc(Hons) four year degree with placement year 104 – 120 UCAS Tariff points

Check the title of your course to see if it's a BA or BSc award. UCAS Tariff points will primarily be from Level 3 qualifications such as but not limited to A-levels, T Levels, a BTEC/UAL Extended Diploma or a Foundation Diploma. 

Check how many points your qualifications are worth

For applicants whose first language is English we require you to have or be working towards GCSE English Language Grade 4 (C), or equivalent. 

If English is not your first language you will need to meet the same standard which is equivalent to the IELTS Academic 6.0 overall score, with at least 5.5 in Reading, Writing, Speaking and Listening. We accept a range of in country equivalencies and approved tests.  

If you need a student visa to study in the UK, you may need to take a recognised language test. You can read our English Language Requirements for more information.

For starting your studies in 2023

UK applications: 25 January 2023 (for equal consideration)

Applications after the 25 January will be considered on a first-come, first-served as long as there are places available. Apply for this course now.

International fee payers

International fee payers can apply throughout the year. But we recommend applying as early as possible, to make time for visa and travel arrangements.

What we're looking for

We want someone who:

  • Is enthusiastic and knowledgeable about the subject.
  • Can talk about why they want to study creative writing.
  • Has writing skills.
  • Shows an emerging understanding of literature’s role in the past and present.
  • Has a passion for and interest in writing as part of the creative industries.

Fees, costs & funding

Tuition fees

Annual tuition fee Student
£9,250 per year Full-time UK
£17,460 per year Full-time EU/international
Annual tuition fee Student
£9,250 per year Full-time UK
£17,460 per year Full-time EU/international
£1,850 per placement year Full-Time UK and EU/international

Tuition fees are set annually and are subject to review each year. The University may therefore raise tuition fees in the second or subsequent years of a course, in line with inflation and/or the maximum permitted by law or Government policy. Students will be notified of any changes as soon as possible. 

The figures above don't include accommodation and living costs

Typical course costs

  • £300 - £400 - Recurring annual costs
  • £500 - Optional study visits and placements for the course duration

You do not need any specific software, but a reasonable home or work computer and standard wifi will be required for this course.

If you need to bring equipment or materials with you, these will be outlined in your Welcome Letter.

Ask a student

What better way to find out about life at Falmouth University than by asking our current students?

From course details and academic support, to the social scene and settling in, our students are ready and available to answer any questions you might have. Simply set up your account, send them a question and they'll get back to you within 24 hours.

 

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Open Days and events

From visiting campus to online application advice, get all the information you need about joining our creative community.

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