Creative Writing, _{MLitt or PgDip}

Available Programmes of Study

Creative Writing

Qualification Duration Learning Mode Study Mode Start Month Location  

MLitt 12 months or 24 months On Campus Learning Full Time or Part Time January View

Programme Information

Semester 1

Semester 1

Those starting the degree in January should be advised that they will complete the dissertation over the summer and finish the programme with the Semester 3 selection of courses. Taught courses do not run in the summer. Students wishing to do their dissertation at the end of the programme should consider starting their study in September.

Information for Part Time Students: This route will run over two years. Up to 120 credit points may be taken per year, and 180 credits are required for completion of the degree. PD5506 must be taken in year 1 and EL5906 (dissertation) must be taken in year 2. It is compulsory to take 60 credits worth of creative writing courses (EL5072, EL5095, EL5567, EL55C4), which can be taken in years 1 or 2. The remaining credit points must be taken from courses in the first half-session (EL50C5, EL5096, EL50C8) or the second half-session (EL5590, EL55C2).

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Compulsory Courses

PD5506: Getting Started at the University of Aberdeen

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Optional Courses

Select 60 - 90 credit points from available level 5 courses:

Creative Writing i (EL5072)

30 Credit Points

The course engages students in a variety of activities designed to develop their creativity and originality, as well as in specific tasks to test and extend their skill in the writing of poetry. Students will attempt imitations of a variety of different poetic styles, will be provided with a number of specific 'stimulus' exercises and will develop and revise their poems both independently and in regular workshop sessions.

View detailed information about this course

Creative Writing III: Non - Fiction (EL5095)

30 Credit Points

This course is devoted to the development of non-fiction creative prose. Among the themes and genres engaged with will be: travel writing, psychogeography, non-academic critical writing, prose poetry, diary, memoir, and the fragment. Students will study examples across the genre and build up a portfolio of work, discussion of which will form the basis of weekly workshops.

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Writing Prose Fiction: the Journey. (EL55C4)

30 Credit Points

This course will concentrate on the often protean process of writing fiction in longer forms, simultaneously exploring the potential of expanding, extending or even transforming students’ work. While creating prose, students will develop their understanding of fiction writing and storytelling but always in relation to exploring the potential of plot and character development. Students will arrive at satisfying samples of work with reasoned potential for expansion. Through supportive sessions, students will conclude the course with a completed, rounded segment of work but with clear ideas of plotting and where their story can journey on forward to.

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Semester 2

Semester 2

Optional Courses

If fewer than 90 Creative Writing credits are selected across the Academic Year, the remaining credits should be made up from the following selection of English Literature electives:

Locations and Dislocations: the Role of Place in Literature (EL50C1)

30 Credit Points

This course examines the social, political and cultural construction of place in literary texts. The imaginative co-ordinates of places such as ‘Scotland’, or ‘England’ exist in a constant state of flux, refusing to yield an essential, authentic image. Using core texts from the early modern period paired with more recent literary responses we explore the idea of place in its various forms. Key themes and issues to be discussed will include the rural and urban divide; literature and nationhood; the nature of community; the significance of emigration, and displacement; walking texts, metropolitan literature, and ideas of the “new world”

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The Novel: Environments and Encounters (EL50C5)

30 Credit Points

This module explores how the evolution of the novel form has allowed, and required, authors to find new ways of depicting spaces, places and interactions (between characters in particular environments, but also between characters and their environment). This chronologically wide-ranging course moves from the early days of the novel form through to contemporary fiction, allowing for an opportunity to study the many literary tactics that authors have employed to create the settings for their works – from vast historical backdrops, to natural spaces, to urban environments, to smaller domestic and private places. It also us to consider how different cultural moments have prompted authors to rethink how they represent characters’ encounters with the world around them, and with the other cultures, races, species and genders that inhabit that world. As well as narrative theories, students will have the chance to study canonical and less well-known texts from angles informed by current critical approaches such as ecocriticism, animal studies, postcolonial and queer theory.

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Placing the Romantic (EL50C8)

30 Credit Points

From Wordsworth’s lakes to Walter Scott’s Scottish Highlands, the concept of literary Romanticism is irrevocably tied to ideas of place and locale. During the Romantic era colonisation, urbanisation, agricultural reform and conflict all redefined how writers thought and wrote about their place within the world. This course will explore how Romantic texts have engaged with and defined place, looking not just at canonical examples of the romantic English landscape, but also exploring Romanticism’s global reach and Victorian and modern legacies.

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Writing the Self (EL55C2)

30 Credit Points

What is at stake in writing autobiographical texts? What are the forms writers have used to write themselves? Is autobiography simply, as Oscar Wilde states, the lowest form of criticism? Looking at a range of texts from the Medieval period to the present, with a special focus on women’s writing, this course examines the formal, ethical, political, and aesthetic choices writers make when writing themselves.

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Infinite Scotlands: Scotland and the Literary Imagination (EL55C7)

30 Credit Points

This course explores the ways in which place is negotiated in a range of Scottish texts. Looking at a selection of texts about rural, urban, and diasporic experience across the centuries, and including both canonical and lesser-known works, this course will acquaint students with key debates in the study of regional and national fiction. Place in these texts is something to be praised and scorned, embraced and abandoned, but always remains central in any discussion of individual and communal identities. Major themes and issues to be discussed include: the idea of ‘home’; the role of nostalgia and longing in Scottish fiction; the nature of community; the significance of emigration and displacement.

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Places and Environments: Critical Dialogues (EL55D3)

30 Credit Points

This course introduces students to a range of critical, theoretical, and philosophical approaches to environment and place, as well as aligned research methods. Students will read key works of ecocriticism, ecofeminism, environmental philosophy, cultural geography, and related areas. Close reading and discussion of central texts will provide a foundation for further research, including the dissertation. Students will have the opportunity to discuss these ideas in relation to both literary and social contexts. This course is restricted to students on the MLitt Literatures, Environments, and Places, or by permission of the School.

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Screenwriting: the Narrative Within the Frame (EL55TM)

30 Credit Points

This course will investigate different forms of scriptwriting by writers from a range of historical periods. We will be considering narrative form and content as shaped by subject selection and storytelling devices and structures. The filmic themes will be considered from aesthetic, historical and theoretical perspectives. Through a series of seminars, workshops and screenings, students will develop approaches to visualising film narratives, culminating in a scriptwriting folio of work.

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Semester 3

Semester 3

Optional Courses

Dissertation: Creative Writing Portfolio (EL5906)

60 Credit Points

This course will provide students with the opportunity to write an extended folio of creative work in either poetry or prose. It will provide students with the opportunity to explore and extend their creative ambitions in writing and, through the reflective commentary element, enable them to contextualise their own creative achievements in relation to works by established writers. Throughout the evolution of the folio, the student will develop a thorough practical awareness of some of the key stylistic, formal and expressive possibilities available to the skilled creative writer.

View detailed information about this course

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Programme Fees

Fee information

Fee category	Cost
EU / International students	£19,400
Tuition Fees for 2021/22 Academic Year
Home / RUK	£9,200
Tuition Fees for 2021/22 Academic Year

MLitt 12 months or 24 months On Campus Learning Full Time or Part Time September View

Programme Information

Semester 1

Semester 1

Information for Part Time Students: This route will run over two years. Up to 120 credit points may be taken per year, and 180 credits are required for completion of the degree. PD5006 must be taken in year 1 and EL5906 (dissertation) must be taken in year 2. It is compulsory to take 60 credits worth of creative writing courses (EL5072, EL5095, EL5567), which can be taken in years 1 or 2. The remaining credit points must be taken from courses in the first half-session (EL50C2, EL5096, EL5089, EL5092) or the second half-session (EL5590, EL5598, EL55C2).

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Compulsory Courses

PD5006: Getting Started at the University of Aberdeen

In addition, select ONE or BOTH of the following options:

Creative Writing i (EL5072)

30 Credit Points

The course engages students in a variety of activities designed to develop their creativity and originality, as well as in specific tasks to test and extend their skill in the writing of poetry. Students will attempt imitations of a variety of different poetic styles, will be provided with a number of specific 'stimulus' exercises and will develop and revise their poems both independently and in regular workshop sessions.

View detailed information about this course

Creative Writing III: Non - Fiction (EL5095)

30 Credit Points

This course is devoted to the development of non-fiction creative prose. Among the themes and genres engaged with will be: travel writing, psychogeography, non-academic critical writing, prose poetry, diary, memoir, and the fragment. Students will study examples across the genre and build up a portfolio of work, discussion of which will form the basis of weekly workshops.

View detailed information about this course

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Optional Courses

Plus one 30 credit course from the options below if only one of the above Creative Writing options is chosen:

EL5092 - Approaching Literature (30 credit points)

EL50C2 - Irish and Scottish Romanticism [1760 - 1830] (30 credit points)

EL5096 - Public Engagement for Arts (30 credit points)

The Novel: Environments and Encounters (EL50C5)

30 Credit Points

This module explores how the evolution of the novel form has allowed, and required, authors to find new ways of depicting spaces, places and interactions (between characters in particular environments, but also between characters and their environment). This chronologically wide-ranging course moves from the early days of the novel form through to contemporary fiction, allowing for an opportunity to study the many literary tactics that authors have employed to create the settings for their works – from vast historical backdrops, to natural spaces, to urban environments, to smaller domestic and private places. It also us to consider how different cultural moments have prompted authors to rethink how they represent characters’ encounters with the world around them, and with the other cultures, races, species and genders that inhabit that world. As well as narrative theories, students will have the chance to study canonical and less well-known texts from angles informed by current critical approaches such as ecocriticism, animal studies, postcolonial and queer theory.

View detailed information about this course

Semester 2

Semester 2

Compulsory Courses

Creative Writing II (EL5567)

30 Credit Points

Taught by experienced, award-winning writers, this course will engage students in a variety of activities designed to develop their creativity and originality, as well as in specific tasks to test and extend their technical skill in the writing of prose fiction. Students will be encouraged to develop an awareness of the centrality of narrative voice, to experiment with a variety of different narrative styles and to develop and revise their work in the context of workshop discussion and individually targeted feedback from course tutors.

View detailed information about this course

Optional Courses

Select 60 credit points from the following options:

EL5590 - Locations and Dislocations: The Role of Place in Literature

EL5598 - Approaching Literature 2

Writing the Self (EL55C2)

30 Credit Points

What is at stake in writing autobiographical texts? What are the forms writers have used to write themselves? Is autobiography simply, as Oscar Wilde states, the lowest form of criticism? Looking at a range of texts from the Medieval period to the present, with a special focus on women’s writing, this course examines the formal, ethical, political, and aesthetic choices writers make when writing themselves.

View detailed information about this course

Semester 3

Semester 3

Compulsory Courses

Dissertation: Creative Writing Portfolio (EL5906)

60 Credit Points

This course will provide students with the opportunity to write an extended folio of creative work in either poetry or prose. It will provide students with the opportunity to explore and extend their creative ambitions in writing and, through the reflective commentary element, enable them to contextualise their own creative achievements in relation to works by established writers. Throughout the evolution of the folio, the student will develop a thorough practical awareness of some of the key stylistic, formal and expressive possibilities available to the skilled creative writer.

View detailed information about this course

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Programme Fees

Fee information

Fee category	Cost
EU / International students	£19,400
Tuition Fees for 2021/22 Academic Year
Home / RUK	£9,200
Tuition Fees for 2021/22 Academic Year

PgDip 9 months or 21 months On Campus Learning Full Time or Part Time January View

Programme Information

Please contact study@abdn.ac.uk for more information about this programme.