Creative Writing (Novels)  MA

Course Content

The course is designed for writers with some experience who would now like to go the extra mile and complete a novel. We do not therefore teach or examine short stories. This is a course for people who want to write full-length novels.

Most importantly, every year, an anthology of excerpts from all the students' novels is published in the final term: this is presented in a showcase evening and then distributed to every literary agent in London and, for overseas students, the agents in their home cities as well (in the recent past our anthology has been sent to New York, Toronto and Sydney). 

The course encourages you to be ambitious and imaginative in your writing. This course focuses either on the Literary Novel or the Crime Thriller Novel (students must choose at the outset which they would like to focus on).  Within the field of Literary, there are many possible styles, approaches and forms; within Crime, everything from the police procedural to combat thriller, from psychological to cyber thriller, will be addressed. 

Our ethos is excellence and diversity, with an emphasis on recruiting students of different ages and from a wide range of backgrounds.

In November 2011, The Guardian ranked City's Creative Writing MA in the top three writing courses in Britain (alongside UEA and Bath Spa).

After coming into contact with students on City's Creative Writing MA, I was extremely impressed both with their talent and their level of commitment. Standards are exceptionally high: I could immediately tell that I was dealing with writers of enormous potential, and that this potential was being fully recognised and encouraged by the tutors. I could hardly think of a better environment in which to hone the craft of writing.

Jonathan Coe, author of What A Carve Up! and The Rotters' Club

Course Structure

• Fundamentals of fiction and experiments in style
• Reading as a writer
• Complete novel

This is a two-year course. Each year consists of three ten-week terms.

During Terms 1 and 2, workshops, lectures and tutorials are held on two evenings a week. These are principally concerned with extending your skills, understanding of the novel form and awareness of creative possibilities; along with analysing the work of leading writers and exploring that work through a variety of exercises, all of which are designed to 'put aside your default writing style' and encourage you to experiment with all the other possible approaches to writing fiction.

All workshops are based round the students' own writing for assignments. We also closely analyse published novels: this isn't literary criticism, this involves taking apart novels as you might take apart a clock too see how it works. We aim to give students the confidence to start writing their novels in exactly the voice and structure which suits their story and story-telling abilities.

Throughout both years, there are Q&A sessions with visiting novelists - recently we have heard from Joshua Ferris, Stef Penney, Clare Clark, Justin Cartwright, Chris Cleave, Adam Thirlwell and Linda Grant.

In Terms 3, 4 and 5, you work principally on your own novel with the support of one-to-one tutorials and participation in student-led workshops. You are allocated two tutors: one from within the course team and one external tutor - often chosen to specifically suit the style or subject of your proposed novel. For each tutorial, you submit 10,000 words which is read and annotated in advance by the tutor - then discussed at length in the tutorial.

In Term 6 (the final term), the lectures and Q&As focus on visits from agents, publishers and other industry professionals. These sessions aim to provide you with knowledge and understanding of the publishing industry and of the business aspects of being a writer. They will also provide you with the skills and understanding necessary to promote a novel to the media and the public.

Most workshops and exercises take place in groups of approximately fourteen students.

Read the full 2014 programme specification.