The Creative Writing MA programme at Edinburgh Napier University has just doubled the number of options you can take on the course. In the past students at the Scottish university were offered five writing practice options - Genre Fiction, Graphic Fiction, Creative Non-Fiction, Screenwriting, and Interactive Media - but were only allowed to select one.
From this year students will be picking two options from among the five, enabling them to experience and experiment in different narrative forms instead of being restricted to a single choice. This change has just been approved by the university, so the current cohort have chosen their options and will start both their new modules next month in Trimester 2.
"This is an exciting new innovation for the MA and for our students," says lecturer David Bishop. "Feedback from previous cohorts said how much they enjoyed the course, but many of them wished they could have taken more than one option. Now everyone on the MA gets to broaden their range as a writer, to experience different narrative forms."
The Creative Writing MA team s proud to have unique options for prospective students. "We were the first university in the world to offer a module in Graphic Fiction - writing the scripts for comics and graphic novels," says Bishop. "Our Genre Fiction module covers crime, fantasy, horror and science fiction - areas sneered at by most MA courses.
"Interactive Media is a massive growth area, but one that's ignored by nearly every other postgrad Creative Writing programme. The Screenwriting option gives our students a chance to pitch their stories to industry professionals. Creative Non-Fiction students have gotten an agent before finishing our course, thanks to that module."
To make room for the change, an old module called Narrative Practice has been retired. "We won't be teaching it anymore, but we're relocating the core vocational skills into our other modules. For example, adaptation and working with pre-created characters go into Graphic and Genre Fiction, while networking goes into Authorship."
The current cohort is only just finishing its first trimester, but the programme team is already offering unconditional places for starting in September 2015. "Doubling the number of writing options means our Creative Writing MA is even more innovative," says Bishop. "We advise anyone thinking of applying to start the process now."
There are links for applying at the top right hand corner of this blog, and you can read more about the Edinburgh Napier MA's unique applications and selections process here.
