#WeAreOCA
The Open College of the Arts' blog
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BA Hons creative writing
In Conversation: Nina Milton and Lizzy Perkins
Posted: 10/12/25 09:33 |
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Reaching the final unit of your stage 3 (HE6) studies is a thrilling moment, but filled with some trepidation. In the Creative Writing Department, The final unit, 3.3 asks the student to create a self-directed outwardly facing project, by clarifying what they want to do as a creative practitioner, so that they graduate knowing where their writing can take them, and how to approach readers, agents, editors, publishers, audiences and producers in a professional manner.
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Student work: Lindsay Peaston
Posted: 01/02/18 09:28 |
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OCA tutor and assessor Liz Cashdan looks at the work of BA (Hons) Creative Writing student Lindsay Peaston.
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A sense of an ending
Posted: 03/01/18 09:24 |
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How do you end your story?
Unfortunately for me, this is a subject which has been a painful one to address this month! I have long preached to my students on how to end a story, and the two key components that I think need to be in place in order for an ending to feel final. But having this week – after seven years – finished a novel that was supposed to be my first I realise I had been overlooking a third component for how to end a story.
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Observation and writing
Posted: 19/12/17 01:51 |
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I guess all good writing like all successful visual art has to start with observation. Maybe, that’s too sweeping because sometimes we might start with imagination. But I would still maintain that imagination has to feed on observation.
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How much descriptive writing does a story need?
Posted: 06/12/17 09:53 |
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Personally, I think it’s not a question of how much description, but what description is offered by the author, to help the reader imagine a living and breathing world they can really immerse themselves in.
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Books you read over and over again
Posted: 27/11/17 09:59 |
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The stories that draw me back time and time again tend to be the ones that immerse me in their world, and it needs to be a world that’s very different to the one in which I live. Which books do you read more than once, and why?
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Ten tips to help beginners come across as advanced writers. Part 2
Posted: 15/11/17 09:09 |
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In the first part of this blog I offered five tips to help the beginner writer come across as more advanced than they actually are. From establishing the gender of your protagonist, where they are in the setting, their Point of View and then keeping the story moving I reflected on a few key components. So now I’ll resume…
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Ten tips to help beginners come across as advanced writers. Part 1
Posted: 07/11/17 09:33 |
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Part of my job as a tutor is to look at some of the first creative writing people have shared with another person. It is a part of the job I relish, and I think it important to meet people’s first shared work with positivity and enthusiasm – where possible. I think it takes real guts to express yourself on the page and then offer it up to other people for feedback.
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Writing in the first person – there are pitfalls
Posted: 10/10/17 09:50 |
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It’s got to be the easiest way to start writing, hasn’t it? Most people have kept a diary at one time or another, and most of us have written letters. Writing from the ‘I’ point of view looks like a doddle compared with handling a number of different characters, because you’re viewing the action from inside one head instead of many. But this approach brings its own problems.
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Making the most of your setting: Part 1.
Posted: 27/09/17 09:30 |
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The science fiction author JG Ballard (most famous for his novel Crash) was adept at making the most of the settings of his novels. They even managed to offer psychological insights into his characters. I therefore think that the settings of his stories are useful to look at as a case study – they were certainly influential on my writing.
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