Top 5 Creative Writing Courses in London With Placements
The demand for creative writing courses in London is high. One of the main reasons for the increase in the number of people interested in writing is to bring out the artist in them. Yeah, individuals with a high amount of creative juices tend to get annoyed with routine work. They crave to utilize their creativity and embrace the artist in them. Curiosity is a devil in them that does not allow them to be normal. This article is written for all such homo sapiens to learn about creative writing and institutions that offer relevant courses.
What is Meant by Creative Writing?
As the word ‘creative’ suggests, it is writing that is based on creativity. The writer gets to combine his thoughts and create content. Writing involves the usage of one’s creativity, innovation, and imagination to create a strong impact on the reader’s mind.
The audience will be able to experience an emotional connection because of the written visuals that are created through words to explain emotions and senses. Academic and journalistic writing is considered the opposite of it. Because they are published to share facts and information with the reader, unlike creative writing that dwells on influencing a person’s emotional state.
What Are the Forms of Creative Writing?
Just like the formal and factual content is divided into business articles, academic writing, and formal letters, creative writing is classified into a few categories as mentioned below.
- Free writing
- Journals
- Diaries
- Letters
- Memoir
- Essays
- Journalism
- Poetry
- Song lyrics
- Scripts
- Storytelling
- Speeches
- Blogs
- Vignettes
Free writing: Anything you write on spot without thorough processing of information is free writing. You can use a document or a notebook to write anything that comes to your mind and add pictures. In simple words, it is all about utilizing freedom to express yourself.
Journals: A journal is a traditional or digital book that allows you to log your thoughts and feelings. People in general maintain a dream journal, a goals journal, or a memory journal. Writers are known to record their random thoughts and ideas in all-purpose omni-journals or an idea journal. These kinds of written logs are utilized for project planning and brainstorming.
Diaries: This is a kind of journal that is used for capturing daily activities. Some individuals prefer a letter format addressing the diary and sharing their daily life activities. If you have an idea to write a memoir in the future, begin by purchasing a diary.
Letters: It is important to obtain a letter-writing skill because it will allow you to clearly communicate your thoughts to the recipients. No wonder letters were introduced decades ago. Ensure to choose the right words to include in the letters written for family, business associates, and friends as they can make or break a relationship.
Memoir: This category does not involve fiction. Memoirs are written based on true events in the life of an author. The artist can focus on one or more experiences of themselves to share them with the audience. For example, you could write about your journey of healing from a traumatic phase.
Essays: Most people assume that essays are an academic form of writing. But the fact is even essays are available in different types. Creativity can be infused in essays to create persuasive essays, descriptive essays, and personal essays for various purposes.
Journalism: As a matter of fact we are told to believe that journalism is all about the collection and presentation of facts, events, and people. But in the current world, journalists have become creative to present content in a storytelling approach combined with their opinions to make convincing and compelling pieces.
Poetry: If you are a romantic and overly expressive person, poetry is for you. Yes, poetry lets you bring out the artist in you. Though this form of creative writing is under-appreciated, many individuals attempt and excel in prose poetry, free-form poetry, and form poetry.
Song lyrics: This is a brainer; this kind of content creation is similar to poetry. Because the person gets to add words to the music to make it entertaining.If you have the skill to play an instrument or love to create an impression on listeners of a song, choose this genre.
Scripts: Write content that can be transformed into a film, play, or drama. A majority of scriptwriters dedicate their time to the creation of content for television, theater, film, or video games. Though the director holds the key to a film, you can still reach the hearts of the audience through your story.
Storytelling: Both nonfiction and fiction writing can have a storytelling aspect. Some of the forms of fiction storytelling are short stories, flash fiction, full-length novels, and novellas. True events in the life of an individual can be expressed through diaries, speeches, memoirs, essays, and other types of creative writing. Storytelling is an outcome of the talent to utilize one’s skill which is why it is instilled in almost all kinds of creative content creation.
Speeches: If you are keen on getting the career progress you want, then speeches are the best choice to help you. Speeches can be informative, inspirational, and persuasive. Speech-writing can allow you to write and express your feelings, and thoughts to a group audience at events like a wedding, award, or graduation ceremony.
Blogs: A blog is a platform to publish content online. You can post any kind of writing on a blog. Most of them contain essays and articles. Some of them also allow the users to share poetry, journalism, fiction, and journals or diaries. All you need is a smart device to let the world read your thoughts and feelings.
Vignettes: A vignette is a piece of work that focuses on explaining the present moment. It could be about an idea, person, or related elements for the audience to read. It can be used to describe anything be it a story, poem, personal account, or description.
Elements in a Creative Writing Concept
It is important to learn the main aspects of creative writing, especially a storytelling approach to become a creative writer. This is why a list of elements involved in creating a story is shared below.
Unique plot: One major aspect that separates creative writing from other forms of writing is the presence of a plot. Creative artists have the opportunity to utilize their ideas and make a unique plot. It doesn’t mean that every writer must be completely creative, they can choose to remake a few stories as well. If you are interested in creating a story, the plot is the main element. The absence of a plot makes the story boring and unappealing.
Character development: A story is not a story without characters in it. Developing characters is an important aspect of creative writing. Most authors prefer narrating the events from a third-person point of view. Character development intrigues the bookworm reading the content as he gets the opportunity to experience changes in the lifestyle and behavior of the main characters. You must have a clear view of your characters in your mind to effectively describe the transformation of the protagonist and antagonist.
Underlying theme: Most authors do not focus on sending a message to society through their work. However, every story will eventually impact the reader in some way. It means there will be an underlying message or theme that makes a story complete. It means you have the opportunity to share lessons through your creativity. Isn’t it amazing?
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Visual Descriptions: Formal kind of writing styles exclude visual descriptions. That’s because they are meant to share information and facts. Creative writing on the other hand essentially involves visual descriptions to let the reader imagine the situation, a character’s appearance, and objects. Visual descriptions allow the audience to imagine themselves in the situation and imagine the surroundings as per the description. This is also a reason why the ‘show doesn’t tell’ concept works like magic.
Point of View(POV): How you narrate the story is a crucial aspect as it encourages the book purchaser to engross themselves in the content. Below is the list of point-of-views available at your reach.
- First Person: The main character describes the events and situations in life taking you to the end of the story. It simply means the protagonist will narrate the whole story to you, which is why words like ‘I’ appear in the content.
- Second Person: This type of POV is not generally adopted for creative writing. The narrator directly speaks to the reader in the second person POV which is why you come across words like ‘you’. Bloggers generally prefer this format to convey their message. This is also utilized in instructional writing.
- Third Person: This POV is further classified into third-person omniscient, third-person multiple, and third-person limited.
- Third person limited – the narrator presents the story by using words like ‘he/she/they’ for the characters. They narrate a single character’s feelings and inner thoughts. It is more or less like the first-person narrative but here the narrator takes the responsibility to narrate the story for you.
- Third person multiple – in this kind of POV, the narrator knows and describes the inner thoughts and feelings of several characters.
- Third person omniscient – this is a similar narrative to third person multiple, however, here the narrator has knowledge about each and every character.
Non-creative writing has dialogues included in it to effectively convey the information. For example, an interview with a candidate. Creative writing also needs dialogue to describe the interaction between the characters to elevate the story. The addition of dialogue to creative writing promotes the development of the plot and characters.
Imaginative Language: The best part about creative writing is its scope to use creativity. Yes, as an author you can explore the field by using more metaphors, anecdotes, figures of speech, and similar figurative language to create an image of the characters and situations in the readers’ mind.
Emotional Appeal: The main goal of an author of a creative story must be to trigger an emotional response in the reader. The audience will continue reading when you emotionally connect with them through your written expression of thoughts and feelings.
Educational Entities That Offer the Best Creative Writing Courses in London
Having the ambition to become a creative writer is a respectable desire. However, your goal to become an artist must have the required support and skills. A lack of essential faculties and guidance can take you nowhere. This is why a list of colleges offering creative writing courses in London is listed below.
1. IIM SKILLS:
If you are keen on acquiring skills, an institute like IIM SKILLS which provides courses online is the best choice for you. It is a leading ed-tech entity in Asia. Its presence on the internet allows it to deliver creative writing courses in London to individuals aspiring to become renowned artists.
Creative writing is part of its Content Writing Course that allows the student to understand and learn crucial creative concepts. As a learner, you can benefit from the course and acquire the skill to create fiction, and non-fiction poems, books, dialogue, video scripts, and many more kinds of content.
Once you finish the program, you will be able to differentiate content writing from copywriting. Apart from encouraging you to publish your books on a platform and advertise your work, they also have talented and well-experienced mentors who can guide you on the creation, publication, and marketing of your books that could relate to any genre.
You don’t have to worry about finding out and using the right tools for publishing your book, as they direct you toward required sources like google books and Kindle Direct Publishers.
The Content Writing Course Will Help You by Educating You To:
- Draft a book which could be as per your choice; fiction or nonfiction
- Draft creative content on your own
- Creation of a short story
- Creation of a chapbook
Contact information
Phone: +919580740740
Mailing address: info@iimskills.com
2. Queen Mary University of London:
It was established in the year 1915. It has strategic connections with the University of Warwick that include joint teaching and research collaboration of computer science and English history undergraduates. It is also partnered with the University of London, Royal Holloway to carry out a variety of educational programs at the London University Institute. The academic faculty consists of Nobel Laureates to transfer their knowledge and teach skills to the learners.
Contact information
Phone: +44(0)20 78826530
3. Brunel University:
Brunel University was established in the year 1966. It is one of the best entities offering creative writing courses in London. It is a Public Research University. It includes approximately 10 research institutes and 8 constitutional academic schools. It is known to educate around 15,200 learners on a full-time basis and has around 2,500 staff members. If you are looking for a trustworthy entity for creative writing courses in London, Brunel University is the right choice for you.
Contact information
Phone: +44(0)1895265519
4. University College, London:
University College London offers an educational program that exposes learners to some of the most challenging and fascinating artwork created by writers from each era. The course also lets the students learn about well-known artistic achievements in music, popular culture, and film. It provides context to the artwork by linking them to key social, historical, technological, and philosophical developments.
Course details
Name: MA English
Fees: £25,800
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5. Lancaster University:
Lancaster University is the appropriate choice for any writer who aspires to get exposure to the learnings of established authors. This literary community has connections with some of the publishing industry experts who can share valuable suggestions with students about various aspects of writing.
Any individual who takes part in the program conducted by Lancaster University will have better creative and critical thinking abilities than the rest. No wonder there is an increase in the number of applicants for the University as it is considered the ideal option for creative writing courses in London.
Modules that include key research methods and practice sessions will allow the learners to get their queries related to ethical and professional aspects to get addressed by well-experienced faculty.
The best part about the program is the modules which include live speeches by renowned business experts and authors. As a student, you have the liberty to pick any form of creative writing which can be short fiction, psychogeography, landscape writing, poetry, radio drama, and lyric essay.
You will acquire skills in creative writing courses in London:
- Create a creative writing portfolio
- Research and practice creative writing.
Contact information
Phone: +44(0)1524592628
Mailing address: ugadmissions@lancaster,ac.uk
FAQs About Creative Writing Courses in London
1. Is creative writing one form of writing which includes storytelling?
Creative writing is a vast field that includes free writing, journals, diaries, letters, memoirs, essays, journalism, poetry, song lyrics, scripts, storytelling, speeches, blogs, and vignettes. In simple words, storytelling is not the only content included in creative writing.
2. What are the elements of creative writing for a book?
A book that specifically involves fiction or nonfiction creative storytelling must have six main elements that are unique plot, character development, the underlying theme, visual descriptions, Point of view, imaginative language, and emotional appeal. Any story without these elements cannot reach the expectations of the target audience.
3. What are the renowned educational institutions to avail of creative writing courses in London?
There are many established and well-reputed educational entities to offer creative writing courses in London. Of which IIM SKILLS, Queen Mary University of London, Brunel University, University College London, and Lancaster University are considered to be the ideal institutes to assist learners in upskilling themselves.
4. Can creative writing be an alternative to technical content creation?
No, technical writing is different from creative writing. Technical writing involves the usage of formal language and the presentation of facts and information, unlike creative writing which revolves around the creation of content to present one’s thoughts and ideas in a creative way. That being said, if you are not a fan of technical writing, you can always opt for creative content creation.
5. Should I choose an online platform or a traditional college for creative writing courses in London?
That totally depends on you. If you are a social butterfly who aims to engage with others and learn something from everyone and the faculty, a conventional entity will do the job. On the other hand, if you do not have time to attend creative writing courses in London and wish to acquire skills from home, digital mediums are always available within your reach. Online platforms like IIM SKILLS have the capacity and essential tools to transform a career of an individual. No wonder they are also included in the list of entities offering creative writing courses in London.
Conclusion About Creative Writing Courses in London
Creative writing is a form of content creation that requires an author’s ability to use his innovation, creativity, and imagination. The main purpose of this kind of creation is to deliver the message in a unique and catchy way to let the readers grasp the information easily and form an emotional connection with the artwork. That being said, not every piece of creative writing is made to invoke emotions and senses in the audience, some are written just to grab the attention of the readers.
Common forms of creative writing are free writing, journals, diaries, letters, memoirs, essays, journalism, poetry, song lyrics, scripts, storytelling, speeches, blogs, and vignettes. As mentioned earlier, story creation is part of creative writing. Any story, be it fiction or nonfiction must have six main elements to make it complete; unique plot, character development, the underlying theme, visual descriptions, Point of view, imaginative language, and emotional appeal.
Because of the creative aspect of creative writing, many learners and scholars in the UK are more interested in learning its concepts. If you are one such individual, take your phone and contact employees of the top colleges offering creative writing courses in London that are mentioned above to have a fulfilling writing career.