MA in Writing for Young People

This specialist creative writing MA is designed for writers for children, teenagers and young adults who aim to complete a novel, series of picture books or shorter stories for young children. It's a practical course, taught by experienced lecturers who are all published children's writers and/or industry professionals.

Since the course began in 2004, more than 45 debut authors have been successfully published by mainstream publishers.

• Running on the Roof of the World by Jess Butterworth (2017) was chosen to be part of the BookTrust Library Pack, was the winner of the Warwickshire Junior Book Award, and was shortlisted for an Awesome Book Award 2019. Since then, Jess has published another two novels and is working on a fourth.
• The Eleventh Trade by Alyssa Hollingsworth was published in the US and UK in 2018, and translation rights have been negotiated for five other countries to date.
• Ways to Live Forever by Sally Nicholls won the Waterstones Children’s Book of the Year Award and the Glen Dimplex New Writers Award in 2008.
• Marie-Louise Jensen and Elen Caldecott were shortlisted for the Waterstones Prize.
• Elen Caldecott, Clare Furniss, Gill Lewis and Jim Carrington have been long-listed for the Carnegie award.
• Sally Nicholls was shortlisted for the Guardian Children’s Book Prize and won the Independent Booksellers’ award for her novel An Island of Our Own.
• David Hofmeyr was shortlisted for the Branford Boase award for his novel Stone Rider.

Overview

This Creative Writing course is for writers for children of all ages, from the picture-book age through to young adult (YA). Prose fiction is likely to be the main area studied, but you'll have the chance to look at writing in all forms, including poetry, picture book texts and narrative non-fiction for young people.

The course supports you to create a significant body of writing, with practical plans for its place in the real world of publishing. It is based on the principle that most writers learn and benefit from working closely with their fellow writers, in a disciplined, supportive setting, and with tutors who are practising and published writers in their field. Most of our students aim to complete a novel by the end of the MA.

The writing workshop is at the heart of the course. With tutors and your fellow writers in a workshop setting, you'll learn to see your work through objective eyes and to think clearly about the different strategies you might adopt. You'll learn from each other’s mistakes and successes, as well as your own. You'll be urged to try things out, take risks and experiment, and reflect on and discuss the writing process. The context modules help you to see your own writing in the wider context of published children’s writing. The course encourages you to read widely and analytically.

Course structure

Trimester one

In the first trimester’s writing workshop, you’ll explore a variety of forms of writing to gain a sense of different age ranges and styles of writing and experiment with your own writing. We encourage all our students to experiment and take risks at this stage of the course.

The context module, Writing for Young People: Forms, Ages and Stages, is concerned with the writer’s relationship with the audience and will help you understand some of the issues raised by writing for young people. You'll read one set text each week to discuss in class, reading "as a writer", looking closely at language and style, in addition to writing short pieces of your own creative work.

Trimester two

In the second trimester’s workshop, you'll be asked to choose your area of writing and use the workshop’s feedback and encouragement to explore it in more depth. You'll bring short excerpts from your work-in-progress for discussion and feedback in the group. You may continue to experiment with different ideas for other stories.

The second trimester’s Context Module looks at contemporary children’s publishing and aims to give a realistic grasp of the choices open to new writers in the field. This is your chance to learn about how the publishing industry works, and to develop the professional skills you need as a working author.

Trimester three

In Trimester three, you'll continue to write your work-in-progress, editing and re-drafting your work to help you develop a manuscript as near to publishable quality as possible.

You’ll be supported by tutorials with a manuscript supervisor. The manuscript may be a novel, a collection of stories, a collection of poems or picture book text. Most of our students choose to write a novel for young people.

Part-time students follow the same sequence of modules, but do so over two years.

Course modules

This course includes or offers the following modules.

• Writing Workshop One: Writing for Young People
• Context Module One: Writing for Young People: Forms, Ages and Stages
• Writing Workshop Two: Writing for Young People
• Writing for Young People: Contemporary Children’s Publishing
• The Manuscript (double module).

How will I be assessed?

The assessed coursework for each Writing Workshop is a folder of creative writing plus a short reflective commentary.

For the first context module, the assessed coursework is an essay of approximately 2,500 words and a folder of creative responses. The second context module is assessed by a portfolio of writing tasks connected to the children’s publishing industry, including two book proposals.

The manuscript is 35,000-40,000 words or the equivalent in poetry or picture book texts.

How will I be taught?

Modules are usually taught via tutor-led writing workshops, with one three-hour session each week for the eleven weeks of each taught trimester, at Corsham Court campus.

We aim to keep the writing workshops small – usually no more than eight students – so that there is sufficient time, support and attention for each person’s work. The manuscript is taught via one-to-one tutorials, working with a tutor who is a published author with particular knowledge of your field of work.

Throughout the course, there will be special events to bring in writers to discuss their work, plus literary agents and editors with practical advice on the publishing process.

Opportunities

Work placements, industry links and internships

The MA has established an excellent reputation in the children’s publishing world, and agents and editors look forward to the annual Anthology of new work from the MA Writing for Young People students.

We have links with local schools and the Bath Festival of Children’s Literature.

Sometimes publishers will approach the course with competitions or other opportunities such as writing a short story for a new anthology for publication, or for a new picture book text.

MA Writing for Young People students were invited to write stories for the Roman Baths museum website.

What you'll learn

Overview

The MA in Writing for Young People is well known throughout children’s and young adult publishing for developing emerging writers' work to publishable quality. Our alumni include Sally Nicholls, Elen Caldecott, CJ Skuse, Emma Carroll, Jasbinder Bilan, Damaris Young, Sophie Kirtley, Kate Mallinder, Yasmin Rahman and David Hofmeyr.

Writing workshops lie at the heart of the course, helping you to gain wide-ranging insights into your writing strengths and weaknesses and to experiment with your writing in a supportive but disciplined environment. A critical aspect of the course is the chance to meet other aspiring writers, learn from them, and develop the creative networks that will support you in the next stage of your writing career.

Workshop modules lead to the production of a full manuscript – or a substantial proportion of one – with a clear understanding of how to complete the book. While most students focus on Middle Grade or young-adult prose fiction, others choose picture books, chapter books, collections, verse novels, or even narrative non-fiction for their manuscript project.

Your writing will be underpinned by an increased understanding of children and young people as readers, of the current publishing industry, and of good practice in submitting to agents and publishers. You'll acquire the core skills and knowledge working authors need to give their work the best chance of success in the marketplace.

In addition to a teaching team who are all published authors, with wide-ranging experience in various areas of publishing and the Arts, the course hosts a program of guest speakers and activities throughout the academic year.

Course structure

Trimester one

The first Context module explores the main categories of books published for children and young people, with a focus on reading as a writer and on understanding your audience at the different stages of childhood and adolescence. We consider a wide range of texts from picture books and chapter books to middle-grade and young-adult novels; verse novels and some narrative non-fiction are also included.

The first Writing Workshop module is an opportunity to explore various aspects of the craft of writing for children and young people. This module focuses on experimentation, trying new things developing your range, and working with your tutor and your peers to test and try out your ideas.

Trimester two

The second Writing Workshop module enables you to continue to experiment and develop your skills as a writer, and to start to focus more on your final manuscript project.

The second Context module considers the realities of the children’s publishing industry, publishing as a business and the practicalities involved in turning a manuscript into a book. In addition to looking at the work of agents, editors, sales teams, rights professionals, marketing teams, and publicists, you'll develop the professional skills all working authors need to position and promote their work.

Trimester three

The Manuscript module involves working on a one-to-one basis with a tutor to develop, draft, edit, and revise your major project – part of a full-length novel, or a collection of pieces.

How will I be assessed?

You'll be assessed through a range of tasks, including creative portfolios, samples of work-in-progress, reflective commentaries, a selection of publishing-focused pieces, and your manuscript submissions – this might be a portion of a novel or a selection of picture/chapter books or other short works

Over 70 of our alumni have now been traditionally published. Our graduates also go into editing (freelance and at a publishing house), agenting, rights, marketing, publicity, sales, events management, and teaching. They have careers in journalism, writing for magazines, teaching, various aspects of publishing, and television.

Our published graduates have secured contracts with, among others:

• The Andersen Press
• Bloomsbury
• Chicken House
• Egmont
• Faber & Faber
• Gullane
• Hot Key Books
• Nosy Crow
• Orion
• Oxford University Press
• Penguin
• Quercus
• Scholastic
• Simon and Schuster
• Templar
• Walker Books.

How will I be taught?

Writing Workshop and Context Modules

You'll be taught through a mix of on-campus workshops/lectures, online lectures/workshops, and one-to-one tutorials. We aim to keep the writing workshops small so that there's sufficient time, support, and attention for each person’s work.

Part-time students will have one module per taught trimester; while full-time students will have two.

The Manuscript Module

All students will focus on the Manuscript Module from June to September whether studying for one year full-time or two years part-time. The manuscript is taught via one-to-one tutorials, working with a tutor who is a published author with particular knowledge of your field of work, or who can bring complementary expertise to bear on it.

What’s the time commitment in a usual week?

Our teaching weeks run October-January and February-May, with June-September comprised of one-to-one tutorials on a schedule negotiated by the tutor and student.

With some exceptions, during teaching weeks, full-time students will usually have two workshops on a single day or over two days: each workshop is three hours. Part-time students will have one three-hour workshop per week. We let students know during the summer what their provisional timetable is.

We suggest that part-time students treat the course as a part-time (0.5 equivalent) job, setting aside roughly 17.5-20 hours per week for workshops, homework, assessment preparation, reading, participation in optional projects, guest lectures, and independent study. We suggest full-time students treat the course as a full-time job (35-40 hours per week equivalent).

Course length

One year full-time or two years part-time.