The Workshop: Craft and Process
| Module title | The Workshop: Craft and Process |
|---|---|
| Module code | EASM215Z |
| Academic year | 2025/6 |
| Credits | 30 |
| Module staff | Dr Ali Lewis (Convenor) |
| Duration: Term | 1 | 2 | 3 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Duration: Weeks | 10 |
| Number students taking module (anticipated) | 25 |
|---|
Module description
The Workshop: Craft and Process centres on sharing work-in-progress and receiving feedback in a supportive, structured online space. You’ll focus on generating new work and developing it through feedback and revision. Weekly reading, discussion, and writing prompts will help you overcome blocks, sharpen your craft, and explore essential topics like voice, structure, and style. You’ll receive personalised feedback from peers and your tutor, while also building your own editorial insight by responding to others’ work. By the end of the module, you’ll have a developing body of work — and the tools to keep writing independently.
Module aims - intentions of the module
This online module aims to:
- Equip you with the skills to build, participate in, and sustain a creative writing community, enabling you to maintain your practice beyond the module.
- Support you in balancing your own creative instincts and judgements with the feedback of others, helping you produce work that is both distinctive and responsive to readers.
- Provide a safe, supportive environment in which you can play and experiment with forms, voices, and techniques beyond your usual practice.
- Develop your ability to give and receive constructive feedback with clarity, tact, and purpose.
- Strengthen your capacity to work iteratively — drafting, revising, and refining your work to a professional standard.
- Encourage you to reflect critically on your own creative process and identify strategies that help you sustain and improve your writing.
In addition to honing your creative and editorial skills, this module supports the development of professional competencies such as collaborative communication, critical self-assessment, and project management.
Intended Learning Outcomes (ILOs)
ILO: Module-specific skills
On successfully completing the module you will be able to...
- 1. Give constructive, targeted feedback on peers creative writing, meeting the standards expected in a professional workshop or editorial environment.
- 2. Respond perceptively and productively to feedback on your own writing, producing successive drafts that show clear development and thoughtful engagement with reader perspectives.
- 3. Produce an extended, coherent body of creative writing in your chosen form, demonstrating craft skills at an advanced postgraduate level.
ILO: Discipline-specific skills
On successfully completing the module you will be able to...
- 4. Reflect critically on your creative process, including editorial decisions, influences, and development.
- 5. Produce original creative work to a professional or near-professional standard, informed by in-depth knowledge of literary techniques and genre conventions.
ILO: Personal and key skills
On successfully completing the module you will be able to...
- 6. Demonstrate advanced co-production skills via editing, workshopping, and collaborative engagement with communities of practice in or beyond the classroom.
- 7. Produce a portfolio of writing work suitable for diverse career pathways across industries.
- 8. Communicate your own ideas and the ideas of others concisely, accurately and persuasively to influence opinion, developing, constructing and presenting arguments in appropriate ways.
Syllabus plan
This module is workshop-based and responsive to your work and your interests. This means that there will be a balance between structured learning activities and organic discussion based on the writing you and other students bring and the constructive feedback each piece requires.
While the precise content may vary from year to year, the syllabus will typically cover all or some of the following topics:
- Giving and Receiving Feedback – Practise offering constructive, targeted responses across poetry, fiction, and nonfiction, and learn how to use others’ feedback to make purposeful changes to your own drafts.
- Generative Practice – Produce new work in your chosen form through freewriting, prompts, and constraints, then identify which pieces have the strongest potential for development.
- The Science of Storytelling – Explore how principles of narrative engagement apply across genres, from poetic sequences to personal essays to short stories, and apply these insights in redrafting.
- Beginnings and Endings – Experiment with multiple openings and conclusions, whether in a poem, an essay, or a story, using feedback to refine the most effective approach.
- Structure and Momentum – Shape your work’s internal architecture — whether through plot, thematic progression, or lyrical development — to sustain reader engagement.
- Style and Syntax – Hone sentence- and line-level craft through targeted edits, aiming for rhythm, clarity, and precision across genres.
- Voice and Point of View – Experiment with narrative or lyrical voice, perspective, and register, comparing reader responses to find the most resonant approach.
- Time on the Page – Rework pieces using shifts in tense, chronology, or pacing to heighten emotional or thematic impact, whatever the form.
The module is delivered entirely online. You will be taught through a mixture of online lectures, feedback and workshop forums, structured writing activities, inspiring reading, and supported independent research during the course of the module’s delivery. All of the taught modules on the programme are standalone and can be taken in any order.
Learning activities and teaching methods (given in hours of study time)
| Scheduled Learning and Teaching Activities | Guided independent study | Placement / study abroad |
|---|---|---|
| 60 | 240 | 0 |
Details of learning activities and teaching methods
| Category | Hours of study time | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Scheduled Learning and Teaching Activities? | 60 | Engagement online with taught content? |
| Guided independent study? | 150 | Research and writing of Creative Portfolio |
| Guided independent study? | 50 | Giving of peer feedback and preparation of Peer Feedback Samples? |
| Guided independent study? | 10 | Guided critical reflection? |
| Guided independent study? | 30 | Preparation for taught activities |
Formative assessment
| Form of assessment | Size of the assessment (eg length / duration) | ILOs assessed | Feedback method |
|---|---|---|---|
| Participation in online workshops | Ongoing | 1-8 | Written comments and peer assessments. |
Summative assessment (% of credit)
| Coursework | Written exams | Practical exams |
|---|---|---|
| 100 | 0 | 0 |
Details of summative assessment
| Form of assessment | % of credit | Size of the assessment (eg length / duration) | ILOs assessed | Feedback method |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Creative Portfolio | 75 | 5,000 words or 200 lines of poetry or a hybrid work agreed in advance with your tutor. | 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 | Feedback sheet with opportunity for tutorial follow-up. |
| Peer Feedback Samples | 25 | 1,500 words | 1, 2, 4, 6, 8 | Feedback sheet with opportunity for tutorial follow-up. |
Details of re-assessment (where required by referral or deferral)
| Original form of assessment | Form of re-assessment | ILOs re-assessed | Timescale for re-assessment |
|---|---|---|---|
| Creative Portfolio | Creative Portfolio (75%) | 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 | Referral/Deferral Period |
| Peer Feedback Samples | Peer Feedback Samples (25%) | 1, 2, 4, 6, 8 | Referral/Deferral Period |
Re-assessment notes
Deferral – if you miss an assessment for certificated reasons judged acceptable by the Mitigation Committee, you will normally be either deferred in the assessment or an extension may be granted. The mark given for a re-assessment taken as a result of deferral will not be capped and will be treated as it would be if it were your first attempt at the assessment.
Referral – if you have failed the module overall (i.e., a final overall module mark of less than 50%) you will be required to submit a further assessment as necessary. If you are successful on referral, your overall module mark will be capped at 50%.
Indicative learning resources - Basic reading
As this is a workshop-based module, a high proportion of your reading will comprise writing by your fellow students. You will also be expected to research and read independently. These are in addition to weekly set readings of individual poems and prose excerpts, which may be drawn from some or all of the following.
Basic reading:
- Discovering Creative Writing, Graeme Harper
- Negotiating with the Dead, Margaret Atwood
- Wired for Story, Lisa Cron
- The Science of Storytelling, Will Storr
- The Cambridge Companion to Creative Writing, David Morley and Philip Neilsen (Eds)
| Credit value | 30 |
|---|---|
| Module ECTS | 15 |
| Module pre-requisites | None |
| Module co-requisites | None |
| NQF level (module) | 7 |
| Available as distance learning? | Yes |
| Origin date | 11/08/2025 |
