Online course
Creative Non-Fiction Writing: Next steps
18 weeks
18 weeks
Join Dan Richards, author of five works of creative non-fiction including Holloway, Climbing Days and Outpost for an 18-week in-depth online creative writing course. This intermediate course builds on the expertise acquired at an introductory level and has a focus on using place and locations in creative non-fiction.
In this course you will read deeply from a wide variety of non-fiction texts, you will take place in a series of live zoom sessions and 1-1 tutorials, and you will broaden the possibilities of your creative non-fiction writing. By the end of the course, you will have an essay-length piece of completed creative non-fiction.
Classes are capped at 15 places to ensure a high-quality experience.
Module 1 – What is Creative Nonfiction
In this module, you’ll define exactly what creative non-fiction is and what it isn’t, and you’ll have a look at some different examples of creative nonfiction. You’ll also take a first look into reportage, on which your first assignment will be due, and you’ll also listen to the way audio-only programmes use creative non-fiction.
Module 2 – Landscape
In this module, you will explore the non-fiction need to be holistic and open to new ideas and voices when seeking to write and tell stories about the world. You will focus on the locations around you to begin with, and their importance to the narrative you are shaping. You will learn to dive deeper than the surface of your surroundings to analyse and interrogate the spaces around you. For your assignment, you’ll describe looking at a familiar place through different eyes and will take a walk around an area you know well but at an unusual time.
Module 3 – The Essay
This module focuses on writing in a honed, clear, and concise manner whilst also telling a story and forming a connection between your reader and the people and places you are writing about. You’ll read and write short essays that evoke deep emotional responses, and you’ll listen to audio broadcasts that challenge the boundaries of creative non-fiction. Your assignment will ask you to both read and record your own essay. Your feedback for this assignment will come in the form of a 1-2-1 tutorial with your tutor.
Module 4 – Nature Writing
In this module you’ll focus on the world around you, turning the living breathing creatures and landscapes into words on a page. You’ll begin this module with a group session on zoom, you’ll read examples of some of the best nature writing, and for your assignment, you’ll observe an aspect of nature over the course of a week.
Module 5 – Travel
This module will ask you to write about physical journeys. Whether you’re a travel writer or not, your pathway through non-fiction will very likely include a journey to a destination, and through this module, you will capture that journey in writing. You’ll write about books or objects that have led you on physical journeys and your assignment will ask you to write about a journey you took long ago.
Module 6 – The Body
This final module will tackle the place you live all the time – within your own body. You’ll explore the thorny world of research and you’ll find yourself within the bodies of others through your reading. The module will draw together everything you’ve learned about writing creative non-fiction and place, and your final, longer, assignment will allow you to write up to 2,000 words on a subject of your choice. Your feedback for this assignment will also take the form of a 1-1 tutorial with your tutor.
This is an intermediate-level course. To apply, we ask that you submit:
1. A 500-word sample of your work
2. A one-paragraph introduction to yourself.
Email learning@nationalcentreforwriting.org.uk to apply. Please format your email’s subject line: ‘[your name] application for Historical Fiction’. Applications are assessed and places are allocated on a first-come-first-served basis. Application deadline Midday GMT Wednesday 7th September.
Committing to an 18-week course is a big decision for any writer. If you have any questions at all please do get in touch at learning@nationalcentreforwriting.org.uk.
If you have any questions, you can get in touch by emailing Vicki at learning@nationalcentreforwriting.org.uk.
Course scheduleThis course runs for 18 weeks and is split into several modules, which each last two weeks. Modules consist of multiple chapters and your progress is tracked throughout, making it easy to pick up where you left off.
Although a module is open for two weeks, you are not expected to dedicate that entire time to the course! Our online courses are designed to fit around a busy lifestyle and each chapter is conveniently bite-sized so that you can always be making progress. On average we expect most students to spend between 3-5 hours per week on a course (this time will be a mixture of reading, community discussions, exercises and assignments). This will vary from student to student and some modules may be more intensive than others.
Each module includes smaller exercises and a main assignment. How much time you spend on these is flexible and will depend on your own writing style and process.
“I’ve taken away a much greater confidence in my creative work, an ability to be much more flexible but also decisive with my writing ideas and have learned many new writing techniques and ways of working.”
“I have learned a huge amount on this course. I feel I have leaped ahead in my knowledge of writing and what I am capable of writing at the moment.”
“My output has improved a thousand-fold in both content and quality.”
“The course had a therapeutic effect. I gained a sense of freedom from getting lost in the characterisations and dramas of my stories.”
“The course exceeded my expectations in every aspect with how well-structured it was, the exercises and the feedback. I couldn’t have asked for anything more.”
“Having someone read and feedback on my writing gave me focus and motivation.”
Who is this course for?This course is ideal for people who have done some training or beginners courses who want to:
Core areas of expertise: “I studied English Literature and Philosophy at UEA, and Sculpture at Norwich Art School. I think this background makes me quite an open writer, interested in many things. Every book I write is an attempt to better understand a facet of the world that I’m curious about. At the moment, for example, I’m writing a book named Overnight, an exploration of nocturnal operations which replenish, repair and protect the world whilst most of us are asleep.”
Notable works: His first book, Holloway, co-authored with Robert Macfarlane & illustrated by Stanley Donwood, was a Sunday Times Bestseller (Faber, 2013). The Beechwood Airship Interviews, a book about art and creative process was published by HarperCollins in 2015. Climbing Days (Faber, 2016) a mountaineering memoir, saw him set out in the footsteps and hand-holds of his great-grand-aunt and uncle, Dorothy Pilley and I.A. Richards, on peaks across Europe.
Dan’s fourth book, Outpost: A Journey to the Wild Ends of the Earth (Canongate, 2019), explored of the appeal and pull of far-flung shelters in mountains, tundra, forests, oceans and deserts; landscapes and which have long inspired adventurers, pilgrims, writers, and artists. He has written about travel and culture for various newspapers and magazines including The Economist, Guardian, Harpers Bazaar, Daily Telegraph, Monocle and Caught by the River.
What’s great about the course?“Both the CNF courses I run are full of writing and writers I love, and each new cohort of students brings something new to the mix so the teaching is ever-changing. I’m always adding new books and voices to the curriculum so the programme always feels fresh and contemporary.
“I love the sense that I’m allowing fellow writers to realise their potential and introduce them to texts that may change their thinking, process and lives as a whole. I think people genuinely love the breadth of the reading. The first module introduces books that push and challenge and delight in their eclecticism — Consider the Oyster by M.F.K. Fisher, An African in Greenland by Tété-Michel Kpomassie, A Fortunate Man by John Berger and Jean Mohr, Sea State by Tabitha Lasley — it’s as Susan Sontag said, curiosity is key: ‘Attention is vitality. It connects you with others. It makes you eager.”