皇家墨爾本理工大學

In this degree you’ll be surrounded by a group of passionate writers of different levels and experience. You’ll work closely on your writing in an intensive studio model with world-leading lecturers and creative practitioners, improving your writing and solving problems from industry.

This degree is designed to make you confident, skilled and adaptable in today’s creative industries - where writing and editing are essential skills, and so are creativity, communication, and critical thinking. Along with leading genres like fiction, screen, and digital writing, you’ll become an adaptable writer by learning the skills to adjust to a constantly changing industry, spending deep time with your creative work, making new experiments, and gaining a diversity of knowledges. Your flair for creative expression will be complemented by becoming proficient in the business side of writing, allowing you to understand the publishing process as well as learn the skills required to become a freelance writer, collaborator or creative entrepreneur, working in events and digital media.

With a strong emphasis on industry connections, you will develop a large network of relationships throughout the degree, maximising your opportunities to gain employment upon graduation, and building a lifelong network of creative peers.

Graduates in this degree can expect to work in a variety of roles, including working as writers, editors, publishers, screenwriters, screen producers, digital and mobile media writers, and producers of events like writers’ festivals.

Electives and program structure

Creative writing studios

Each semester, you’ll be immersed in a new creative writing Studio. Across the three years of the degree, these Studios will take you from the foundations of creative writing practice to the production of a major folio of work in your chosen form of creative writing. Studios will enable students to learn and apply the forms of four key genres: Poetry, Fiction, Nonfiction and Screenwriting, in the context of their histories and the work of leading contemporary practitioners. Students also experiment with studios in digital media, sovereignty and Indigenous knowledges, comics and book production, editing and publishing, and performance.

You will then be able to choose which genres you would like to focus upon to explore in more detail. You will apply your writing and professional skills in collaborative and real-world industry contexts, as well as develop your own individual career vision.

Contextual studies

You will study one of five contextual strands (minors) as part of your degree. The five contextual strands are: Asian Media and Culture; Cinema Studies; Politics Economies Communication; Literary Studies; and Approaches to Popular Culture.

Electives

Creative Writing students can also take advantage of a rich choice of electives offered in the School of Media and Communication, as well as from across the University - complementing and enriching your core studies, or broadening your horizons You can pursue studies in your areas of interest including screen production, games, journalism, editing, advertising and design, as well as choose from a range of specialist creative writing electives.

Career

Typically there are three broad areas of work in the creative writing industry:

writing for publication in print and online media
writing for screenplay and script development
writing for and about education and other research fields.

There are increasing opportunities arising in online and mobile media platforms through interactivity, games and apps as well as emerging opportunities for self-employment through ebooks and ezines, and self-publication via the internet. There are also career opportunities resulting from emerging trends such as boutique publishing.