What inspires a writer? How do you develop your idea? What about plotting, character, structure and setting? Explore the general principles of developing a novel from initial inspiration to final draft. Undertake practical exercises to find out which writing methods best suit you and your ideas.

A new genre of literature has been emerging: moving between fiction, history, traveller's tales, and memoir, it explores the spirit of place. This tradition of “psychogeography” has been most vividly taken up and given a new contemporary twist by writers in the eastern stretches of England, in the work of writers such as Ronald Blythe, W.G. Sebald and Iain Sinclair. This module is concerned with writing on the landscape of this region – the ways the wilder reaches of Essex and Suffolk have been depicted – and allows you to develop your critical and creative writing about place. This module usually involves a walking tour around Colchester where we will have the chance to explore these literary landscapes and experience these worlds for ourselves. Students will incur travel costs of approximately £2.50 for this trip.

Editing and redrafting is a crucial part of the writing process, but can often feel like the most difficult phase. This participatory workshop is your opportunity to receive peer-to-peer feedback on your work, in a mutually supportive and friendly environment. You work alongside colleagues to develop creative best practice, and learn how to provide constructive comments on features such as form, voice, and distance.

Beginning with the influential case of the Wilde trial in the final years of the Victorian period, the module traces some of the main strands of queer culture throughout the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. As well as reading a selection of classic works of gay and lesbian fiction, you will also engage with journalism, letters, essays, memoir, visual art, documentary, film drama, and queer theory. Drawing on these varied sources, we will explore the modern cultural history of gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and gender-diverse people. Topics addressed include: the shifting status of same-sex desire in western culture; homosexuality in the nineteenth century; gay rights in the twentieth century; gay and lesbian fiction and memoir; constructions of gender and sexuality within medical and psychiatric discourse; intersectionality; black lesbian feminism; discourse, knowledge, and power; the Stonewall uprising and its precursors; the AIDS epidemic; the New Queer Cinema; transgender identity and activism; queer theory; LGBTQ Hollywood and world cinema; and contemporary queer culture. The module takes a comparative, interdisciplinary approach in order to show how the topics addressed have been taken up in different mediums and in varying cultural and historical contexts. While much of our focus will be on historical examples, consideration will be given throughout to how the texts on the syllabus illuminate present-day issues and debates.