Writing is an exquisite form of art. Writers have the power to turn words into worlds. Creative writing courses fuel these capabilities. Creative writing includes novels, short stories, novelettes, poems, sonnets, scripts, screenplays, and creative nonfiction like personal essays, biographies, and narrative history. Some people naturally possess an innate passion for creative writing but without proper guidance, they struggle to make it. This is where creative writing courses come to the rescue. These courses will mentor the writers and teach them all the techniques, styles, and strategies in writing. Below are the top 10 creative writing courses in Australia offered by different universities and institutions.
1. IIM SKILLS:
IIM SKILLS is an online educational platform that carefully crafted a wide range of online courses for students who are willing to develop their skills and compete in their respective industry markets. Their content writing course includes a module for creative writing along with other writing skills. This course will help you to optimize your writing skills in a more productive and efficient way.
Content Writing Course Overview:
This course includes a 4-week long course along with a three-month internship. This four-week course includes live sessions and practical assignments that help students to apply what they learned. The internship offers wonderful opportunities to publish your articles and ebooks on highly recognized platforms like Google Scholar, Amazon Kindle, Times of India, and Medium.
The creative writing module:
Along with other modules like copywriting, digital content writing, SEO, Social media writing and video scripting the content writing master program offered by IIM SKILLS consists of the creative writing module.
The creative writing module objectives include;
- Creating an awareness about the audience for creative writing and how creative writing differs from copywriting and content writing.
- Drafting your first creative writing work which can be either fiction or nonfiction.
- Learning the writing process of different creative writing works like novels, short stories, poems, scripts, Dialogue placements, autobiographies, and nonfiction.
- Then publish your works with the help of IIM SKILLS in the recognized platforms that are mentioned earlier.
- In addition to that, they offer good placement assistance.
2. University of Melbourne:
The University of Melbourne is the top-most university in Australia and is ranked as the thirty-fourth best university in the world. They have led the education in Australia ever since 1853. They provide a creative course that will certify you as a major. If you are looking for creative writing courses in Australia, you must check this course.
Course overview:
- The art majors include the completion of 24 subjects needed to be covered in the time span of three years, most students complete it with 8 subjects for each year method.
- This course will help you explore different forms of writing and tune you into the critical understanding of literature.
- Also, you will gain experience in new ventures like cross-genre, Avant-Garde, and experimental forms of writing.
- You will also be able to test your critical skills in the contemporary theoretical and philosophical forms of writing.
- More importantly, you gain knowledge to write fiction, nonfiction, poetry, autobiography, theatre, and screen forms of writing.
Course module:
There are three levels in this curriculum for creating writing,
Level 1:
- Creative writing: Ideas and practice.
- Creative writing: Nonfiction, new media.
Level 2:
- Short fiction
- Creative nonfiction
- Poetry
- Writing for screen
- Scripts for Contemporary Theatre
- Writing Identity and Difference
Level 3:
- Novels
- Poetry and poetics
- Life writing
- Advanced screenwriting
- Writing videogames and life performance.
Capstone: a Workshop for encounters with writing.
What is next?
The capstone workshop provides you with good exposure to industry and literature real world. From here you can pursue any of the following mainstreams for a job.
- Marketing and communications – Publishing, editing, and marketing.
- Author – Become your own author and publish your own works.
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3. University of Queensland:
The University of Queensland is one of the six Sandstone universities in Australia. It is a courtesy given by the Australian government for the oldest universities in each one of their states. Established in 1909 by the Queensland parliament in the city of Brisbane, this university has a center for critical and creative writing. If you are looking for a creative writing course in Brisbane, you must go for their creative writing course programs.
Overview:
The basic need for the craft of writing is to connect with the readership, and this course offers it. There are other minor courses offered by this university. But here we are discussing the master’s course they provide in creative writing. This course primarily includes developing writing skills in both commercial and literary genres at the same time building your portfolio through building your network. The learning modes in this course include lectures, tutorials, workshops, studios, and overseas studies.
Course curriculum:
The following are the subjects that are covered in this course;
- Creative Writing: Narrative Fiction
- Contemporary Literature: Reading & Writing
- Fundamentals of Academic Writing
- Writing: Grammar, Syntax, and Style
Projects and Experience:
The students will be given chances to volunteer or gather experience with a range of projects:
- AustLit is a resource for Australian literary, print, and narrative cultures.
- Corella Press, a not-for-profit small press run by the university itself is committed to making beautiful, collectible editions of recovered nineteenth-century Australian Gothic, mystery, and crime stories.
Speaking of the student’s experience, here, the alumni were placed as working professionals in various fields of writing. These possible job opportunities are listed below. Among all these creative writing courses in Australia, this is the one with a vibrant environment for Writers
Job opportunities:
Journalists, teachers, editors, ghost-writers, publishers, science communicators, playwrights, corporate communicators, public relations managers, proposal writers, travel writers, art reviewers, bloggers, columnists, critics, feature writers, fiction writers, poets, publishing coordinators, screenwriters, and speech writers are the areas you can explore to work in after graduation.
4. University of Sydney:
Being one of the sandstone universities of Australia, the University of Sydney is known for consistently taking its place in the rankings of the top fifty universities in the world. This world-renowned institution offers one of the greatest creative writing courses in Australia. The subsequent paragraphs elaborate on the Master of Creative Writing course at the University of Sydney.
Overview:
- This course is for individuals who are fascinated to improve their creative writing skills, learn to read like a writer, and develop their professional writing practice in a meticulous and supportive workshop environment.
- You will master the skills of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and life writing and will be able to understand the skills of literary criticism, structuring, and editing.
- During this course, you will have access to Sydney’s literary life through a constant calendar of readings, events, and celebrated visitors.
- This is an offline course with a duration of 1.5 years, part-time classes are also available.
Course Curriculum:
- Critical contexts for creative writing.
- Research methods for creative writing.
- Life writing
- Experiments in forms
- Narrative writing
- Approaches to Literary History
- Approaches to genre
- Sentiment and Sensation
- The secret history of the novel
- Language and subject
- Literary movements
- Reading magazines
- Creative nonfiction
- Editing and Proofreading
- Critical thinking and persuasive writing
- Professional writing
- Manuscript acquisition and development.
Career paths:
As you might have gained good literary industry experience after the completion of this course you will surely get into any one of the following professional careers; fiction or nonfiction author,
Poet, journalist or reviewer, writer for performance, editor or publisher, teacher or librarian, and media & communications writer. This is one of the few creative writing courses in Australia with literary history.
5. University of New South Wales(UNSW):
This is a multidisciplinary institution of high education standards that has operated as a public domain research university in Sydney since 1949. Universitas21 is a global network for research universities, and UNSW is a member. This university offers a creative writing course that can channel you to contribute to the world of creative writing and contemporary literature through innovation.
Course Overview:
This creative writing course is designed to make individuals well-equipped with writing skills to contribute to contemporary literature. This course gives opportunities for students to explore fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and fiction-criticism forms of writing. The course gives a good foundation for both literary and creative aspects of writing.
The different literary genres, styles, and techniques are explained vividly. This course also helps to understand the complexities in social and critical contexts that revolve around your writing. This is top-ranked among the creative writing courses in Australia.
Writer’s network:
Apart from having skilled and award-winning academics as their staff, the UNSW School of Arts & Media has a wider literary community for writers known as UNSWriters. There will be special events, workshops, and public talks from local and international authors. This is a great opportunity for creative writing enthusiasts to experience a vibrant environment where writing ideas are shared. This network of editors, students, and authors will give you good industry connections and help you to choose your career path.
Student publications:
This university also gives you a chance to showcase your creative writing skills during graduation. The prose and poetry written by the students are published in an annual publication journal run by students called “The UNSWeetened Literary Journal.“
Job opportunities:
The part of the curriculum of this course allows the student to explore elective courses in other forms of art like media & communications, theatre, performance, and film studies. This creates more scope for creative writers apart from becoming an author the students can pursue careers in other creative industries where they can apply their skills. These industries are public relations, copywriting, social media, and scriptwriting.
6. University of Adelaide:
At the heart of the city of Adelaide, the University of Adelaide was established in 1874 and it is the third oldest university in Australia. The Adelaide School of Humanities which is under the University of Adelaide has an excellent creative writing course that will help you to master the skills in creative writing.
Course Overview:
This course is filled with lectures and interactive live workshops. The internationally acclaimed writers will guide you in this course. Writing is a form of craft that is an innate talent in most of the writers yet it is a form of art. What is essential in mastering any form of art is mentorship and guidance with consistent training and professional encouragement.
They offer it, they help graduate writers develop all the skills that revolve around writing. These world-class teaching authors with their years of experience, award-winning publications, and hundreds of hours in their classroom will teach the students with their own authority and style.
What will you learn?
The curriculum includes; Short Story, Contemporary Poetry, Novel Writing, Travel Writing, Script-Writing, Posthuman Writing, Editing for Writers, Political Writing, Apocalypse Fiction, and more. You will also have access to the JM Coetzee Centre for Creative Practice. This is the most authentic course among the creative writing courses in Australia.
This will make you into:
- You will be a more skillful and adaptable writer;
- You can create portfolios of fiction, poetry, creative non-fiction, and work for the screen;
- You will be able to study techniques for working in a range of literary forms and genres;
- You would develop and sustain critically reflective and theoretically informed writing practices;
- You will be able to improve your revision and editing proficiency;
7. University of Western Australia:
The University of Western Australia was established in 1911 in Perth, the capital city of Western Australia by the act of the Western Australian government. They are known for giving students wonderful opportunities in research and industry training. This is one of the best creative writing courses in Australia.
Course overview:
The course aims to make students completely understand the relationship between writing and literary criticism. It makes students engage in tasks that connect the writer and society, alerting students to contemporary literary forms, discourses, and language. Students will also attend different workshops and publish their own works of choice in fiction.
Course outcome:
By the end of the course, students are able to;
(1) Craft, revise, and edit a complete literary work;
(2) Develop the ability to apply the creative technique, with the acknowledgment of literary context;
(3) Gain a critical understanding of the manner in which literary concepts and theories correlate with creative writing practices;
(4) Magnify skills in reading and responding to creative writing in workshop platforms;
(5) Establish a formal understanding of both fundamental critical concepts and creative writing as a cultural practice, and
(6) Undergo inquiry-based learning and research in accordance with creative writing.
Assessment:
Assessment is the evaluation of a student’s knowledge-grasping ability from the course. The indicative assessments in this course are as follows:
(1) a portfolio outline;
(2) a portfolio of creative work; and
(3) workshop participation for upgrading skills.
8. Macquarie University:
Sydney is home to a number of great universities in Australia, and Macquarie University is one of them. This is the most diverse university in Australia with students from over a hundred countries. This university leads the graduate employability in Sydney. This will give a good experience for a creative writer. The Master of Creative Writing course is available here.
Overview:
This is a course with a one-year duration. Multimode learning is available in full-time, part-time and off-campus modes. This course is highly application-oriented as the students will learn alongside a project. The staff are highly efficient and award-winning academics. This is the perfect option for placement-oriented creative writing courses in Australia. The weekly workshops are designed to help the students build their portfolios.
Course structure:
The module includes,
- Narrative fundamentals.
- Creative nonfiction
- Short form writing – Short story, Novella, and Poetry cycle.
- Professional context of literary and feature writing.
- Word essentials for prose and poetry.
- Worldbuilding and Past Backstory.
- Developing the Novel or Novella.
- Manuscript project.
- Digital creative writing.
- Research for creative writing.
Career outcomes:
After gaining all this knowledge in creative writing you will be hired by any one of the following employers; Adult education sector, Arts organisations, Content agencies, Creative industries, Education and training sector, Media and entertainment companies, Media, creative or communications agencies, Publishing houses, Secondary schools, Universities. At these above-mentioned institutions, you will be working in any one of these professions; Fiction author, Content Specialist, Copywriter, Cross-platform producer, Editor or publisher, Media manager, Poet, Screenwriter, Teacher (after further study), Technical writer, and travel writer.
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9. Australian Writer’s Centre:
Unlike the other institutions I mentioned in this list, the Australian Writer’s Centre offers over fifty-five separate mini-courses instead of a complete package of creative writing courses in Australia. If you are looking for a skill upgrade, a career shift, or to simply sense belonging as a creative writer; You can pursue the courses they offer. These courses are highly in demand as they are short and affordable compared to the universities. The creative writing courses in Australia by the Australian Writer’s Centre are categorized by certain domains:
- Creative writing:
- Creative writing stage 1 ( character development, dialogue, and more)
- Writing Workout
- Novel writing essentials
- Write your Novel
- Edit your Novel.
- Courses for kids and teens:
- Creative writing quests for kids.
- Teenage creative writing program.
- Writing books for younger readers:
- Writing picture books
- Writing Children’s Novels
- Writing young adult fiction
- Writing Chapter books for 6 to 9-year-olds.
- Laugh out loud (craft funny stories, humor)
- Writing picture books masterclass
- Fiction techniques:
- Romance writing
- Historical fiction
- Short story essentials
- Story doctor ( edit manuscripts, refine dialogue, descriptions, and imagery)
- Fantasy, Science fiction, and more
- History, Mystery, and Magic
- Crime and Thriller writing
- Plotting and Planning
- Creative nonfiction
- Anatomy of crime: How to write about a murder
- Fictional essentials: Characters, dialogue, point of view, grammar and punctuation, structure, and scenes.
- Cut, shape, polish (editing skills)
- Publishing:
The courses that are covered around publishing are; Inside Publishing, Your Audiobook Advantage, Your Author Website, Self Publishing, and Book covers that sell.
- Writer’s Tool:
This includes the courses needed for motivation for writing and time management in writing. Some courses are also concerned with the presentation or delivery of the fictional work to the readers. Apart from the courses there are writing workshops from best-selling authors and there is also a writing tour, where you will be writing your novel with a mentor.
10. Curtin University:
We reached the end of the list of Top 10 creative writing courses in Australia. Curtin University is a multiple award-winning university with international recognition. They have campuses in Australia, Singapore, Malaysia, Dubai and Mauritius. In Australia, it is situated at Bentley, Perth, Western Australia. This university gives you a chance to strengthen your creative writing skills by enrolling in their master’s course in creative writing.
Course Outline:
There will be experts guiding you in this course journey. You will learn through self-reflection as you perceive the lectures. There is another good industrial skill upgrading activity which is, Working in groups, You will be working in groups as a constructive way for learning and at the same time improving your ability to work with groups. The university is known for its placement records.
The course lecturers, modules, training, and everything is designed in a great way that ensures your placements. The creative writing program boosts your creativity, experimentation, and critical awareness in all forms of creative writing. The course duration is two years.
Course curriculum:
Writing long fiction, Writing fiction for children, Writing Genre fiction, Travel Writing, Writing Poetry, Experimental writing, Engaging narrative, Tricks and truth of authenticity, Writing creative nonfiction, Advanced critical reflection, professional or creative practice, and in the end you will be engaged with an advanced creative project which will help you to build your portfolio.
What is next?
This course will make you industry-ready and will help you to pursue any of the following professions; Publisher, Copywriter, Writer, Editor, Media writer, Author, Poet, Playwright, Speech writer, and Teacher.
Frequently Asked Questions: Creative Writing Courses in Australia
1. What are the important skills needed for a creative writer?
Skills like imagination, creativity, analytical thinking, time management, editing, search engine optimization, researching, communication, and literary skills are needed for a creative writer.
2. Is creative writing difficult for students?
Creative writing contradicts formal education in schools as it includes a logical, linear, and analytical way of learning whereas creative writing is about creativity, authenticity, and adaptability. The students may find it difficult at first and then they fit in eventually as the course progresses. The most important thing in learning creative writing is thinking like a creative writer.
3. What is the best course for creative writing?
IIM SKILLS is one of the top-ranked institutes for learning online courses.
Conclusion: Creative Writing Courses in Australia
These are the top 10 creative writing courses in Australia. The courses mentioned above are proven to possess unique characteristic features of their own. Different modules can be seen in each course. When it comes to creative writing, the form of creative writing matters the most. You should be aware of the form you are willing to write. It can be a novel, short story, poem, creative nonfiction, script, or screenplay. The choice is yours, After choosing which specific form of creative writing you are willing to do, you can analyze and research the list of creative writing courses in Australia mentioned above and then enroll in the course that best fits you and become a phenomenal creative writer.
