curtis brown creative writing course

"Flexible scheduling means writing workshops and discussions can take place across several days, with our tutors checking in and offering comment and feedback at various different points along the way. We have students in places as far flung as Australia, the US, Singapore, continental Europe, Ireland and the UK all taking part on the same course and studying together.”

The Bookseller reported on the boom of writing courses in 2021.

For more information on the 30-Day Writing Bootcamp, visit the  CBC website .

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Pitching Your Novel

Applications, ← back to courses.

Ready to share your work with literary agents? Hone your pitch on this practical and inspiring one-day online course.

If you’re keen to submit your novel to literary agents, this one-day intensive Zoom course will help to make your submission stand out from the pack. The course will run from 10am to 4.45pm on Tuesday 18 June.

Led by CBC's Head of Courses Jennifer Kerslake and former Curtis Brown agent and author Lauren Pearson – with a combined over 20 years of experience working in publishing – this course will guide you through the art of pitching and writing the all-important query letter. It’s ideal for those who want to find a clear, powerful way to talk about their novel and present it and themselves in the best possible light. You’ll learn how to hone your elevator pitch, that all important sentence (or two) that hooks your reader and reveals what’s at the heart of your novel.

You’ll have the opportunity to refine your pitch in the morning, before trying it out on Curtis Brown literary agent. As well as receiving direct on-the-spot feedback, you will get the chance to ask a guest literary agent any questions you have on the submissions process and how to catch an agent’s eye – all in a supportive and welcoming group of aspiring writers.

By the end of the day, you’ll have a clear understanding of what an agent is looking for in a pitch and query letter and be able to move forwards with your submission with confidence.

I found the course excellent... Loved the practical suggestions on how we can work and refine our way toward a pitch that really resonates.

Jennifer Kerslake

Jennifer is Head of Courses / Editor at Curtis Brown Creative. She was previously an editor at Weidenfeld & Nicolson, the literary imprint of the Orion Publishing Group. In her time there, she worked with authors including Costa-shortlisted Elisa Lodato, Stella Prize-winning Heather Rose, Leila Aboulela, Francesca Jakobi, Chloë Mayer, Shannon Leone Fowler and Haleh Agar. She is passionate about nurturing new voices and enjoys working closely with writers to get their work into the best possible shape to share with publishers.

Lauren Pearson

Lauren Pearson has been in publishing for more than 20 years, both in the US and in the UK. A former agent, most recently with Curtis Brown, she has worked with authors including Audrey Niffenegger, Gregory David Roberts, Babette Cole, Isla Fisher, Paula Harrison and Emily Barr. Now a freelance editor and writer, she especially loves working on crime & psychological thrillers, both literary and commercial fiction, as well as middle grade and YA. She is also the author of the Crabtree School series from Scholastic and The Sleepover from Orion Children’s Books. She lives in Buckinghamshire.

COURSE SCHEDULE & DELIVERY

You will join 16 students for a day of lessons on Zoom. This course will run from 10am to 4.30pm on Tuesday 18 June. The schedule is shown in UK time.

Please note that precise dates of sessions and details of course speakers are subject to change.

COURSE FEES & DISCOUNTS

The course fee of £125 (inc VAT) per student is payable in full before the start of the course. Alumni of our selective three- or six-month Writing Your Novel courses and writers who have taken our six-week Edit & Pitch Your Novel course are eligible for a £25 discount.

APPLICATION PROCESS

We will respond to entries throughout the application period. In your application, there is a space to let us know which date you would like to join (we are currently accepting applications to our 18 June course).

As places on this course are limited, we will be working to select 16 writers who have completed their novel manuscript and are nearing or at the point of submission to agents and have the potential to really benefit from this course.

We are offering priority entry to former students of our three- or six-month Writing Your Novel courses (online or in London). We, therefore, advise people who are keen to join this course to apply early.

If you’d like to apply, please fill in our application form.

If you encounter any problems during the application process, or have any more questions about the course, please email [email protected] for assistance.

OPTIONAL REPORTS

Students will be given the option to purchase feedback on their agent letter from a CBC editor .

• Agent letter report: For an additional fee of £50, you can obtain detailed feedback on your pitch letter after the course. The feedback will comprise in-line comments addressing issues as well as an overview of what’s working well and what could be improved (totalling at least 300 words).
• Submission report: £280 (discounted from £300) for a 1,000-word report providing detailed feedback on your one-page synopsis, pitch letter, and 3,000-word opening. Pitching Your Novel students will be entitled to £20 off a submission report.

Nail your one-line pitch and learn how to write a great query letter on this day-long Zoom course on Tues 18 Jun.

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The Enduring Lessons that I Learnt at the Curtis Brown Creative Novel-Writing Course

It’s nearly ten years since I attended the novel-writing course at Curtis Brown Creative, and it’s not too bold a claim to say that those three short months changed the course of my professional life forever – helping me to subsequently find an agent and a publisher, and now have five published novels to my name.

To begin with, I should say that I had studied writing before. In fact, I already had a Masters degree in Creative Writing – so what was it specifically about this course that worked for me, and what are the enduring lessons that still inform my writing today? The following are not writing tips. Instead, they are more general thoughts about an approach to writing – gleaned from working with the CBC tutors, meeting fellow students and listening to the published authors who came along to speak to us.

They are about an attitude to the work, an understanding of the realities of publishing, and the undervalued, but oh-so-important quality of perseverance. I hope they resonate!

Firstly, I learnt how to finish a novel. This was a particular problem for me to solve, as I already had a drawer stuffed with unfinished works – novels that started with energy and promise, but which petered out at around thirty thousand words. The course gave me a practical solution to this problem – to plan my novels in advance.

To accept that I couldn’t just sit down at my desk and expect a novel to drift into my head. (Yes, I know there are some authors who write this way… but it didn’t work for me.) The idea that this gift is universal to all writers is very seductive, but accepting that I hadn’t been duly blessed was a huge game changer. 

I learnt how to work with constructive criticism. One of the most rewarding parts of the course was sharing my embryonic novel with a group of talented writers, and listening to their thoughts and advice. But I also learnt how to deal with this information. How to categorise and weigh the feedback, so that it energised my work, and not the opposite.

You see, the problem to opening out an early draft to a lot of readers, is that you run the risk of being faced with a myriad of differing opinions. Feedback is essential, but too much can be paralysing – leaving the writer confused and even demoralised. I write historical crime fiction – so I was careful to pay the most attention to the advice that came from the writers who appeared to understand the conventions and subtleties of this genre.

Armed with this experience, I embraced the concept of working with ‘trusted early readers’ – a practice that I continue to this day. I now have three trusted readers. They are the only people to see early drafts – even before a book goes to my editor. These readers are completely honest with me (sometimes brutally so) But this is still an essential stage for any of my books. I am getting a truthful reaction to my work – from the sort of reader who would go into a bookshop and freely buy the type of book that I’m writing. 

You soon learn that you can’t please every reader with your writing (and nor should you seek to.) But equally, it is important to identify the readers whom you do want to please. 

I learnt to be professional and persevere. As part of the course, we had presentations from a selection of published authors, including Jojo Moyes, Jane Harris and Harriet Evans, and the quality that really struck me, (apart from their obvious literary talent, of course) was their formidable work ethic.

Inspired by this, I changed my own approach to my writing – an approach that has endured since those days. I have a daily routine, regardless of my other responsibilities. (If you really want to write, you will find space for it in your life, no matter how busy you are.) I have a dedicated place to work, where I run the least risk of being disturbed. (Doesn’t have to be an office. Could be a corner of a room.) Thirdly, I find it very useful to have a daily word count target, and to keep to it.

Sometimes I write more than my target – when the creativity is flowing. But, more importantly, I never write less. Sometimes this can mean writing when I don’t feel like it – but it’s important to keep going. Inspiration always returns. I find that a novel quickly grows with this technique. And, as a bonus, it’s the perfect solution to writer’s block!

I leant to read more. It often surprises me how little some would-be authors actually read. Luckily, I was always a keen reader, but my issue was that I tended to stay in my safe channel – choosing a mixture of the classics, intermixed with the odd work of crime fiction, or the latest Booker prize winner. I now challenge myself to read much widely. To pick up books that I wouldn’t have chosen ten years ago. Apart from being highly enjoyable (in the main), it also stretches and challenges my creativity.  

I learnt to keep learning. I loved everything about the Curtis Brown course – but most particularly I just loved immersing myself in the amazing, mysterious, frustrating, inspiring world of writing. I knew that I wanted to continue this experience whenever possible.

Writing is an art, but there’s also a craft to it. As a writer, you should strive to be a master of this craft. I try to keep my skills up to date in a number of ways – by reading books on the topic, but also by regularly attending workshops and writer presentations.

Or by listening to podcasts, such as Writers Routine – which gives an intriguing and revealing insight into the working practices of other writers. I am endlessly fascinated with how other writers work – as there is no universal model.  And equally, there are no universal lessons about writing. But these were my thoughts, prompted by attending an excellent course ten years ago, and then honed over the intervening years.  I hope they were helpful!

Learn more about Curtis Brown Creative and their writing courses here:  https://www.curtisbrowncreative.co.uk/creative-writing-courses/

About the Author:  S. D.  Sykes  is the author of  Plague Land, The Butcher Bird, City of Masks , and  The Bone Fire , all available from Pegasus Crime. She received an M.A. in Writing from Sheffield Hallam University, and she attended the novel writing course at Curtis Brown Creative, where she was inspired to write  Plague Land . She lives in England.

Find out more about her on her website http://www.sdsykes.co.uk/

THE GOOD DEATH

A somershill manor mystery.

In 1349, Oswald, the third son of the de Lacy family, was an eighteen-year-old novice monk at Kintham Abbey. Sent to collect herbs from the forest, Oswald comes across a terrified village girl. Frenzied with fear, she runs headlong into a swollen river. Oswald pulls her broken and bruised body from the water and returns her to the local village, only to discover that several other women have disappeared. A heinous killer is at work, but because all of the missing women come from impoverished families without influence, nobody seems to care.

Oswald vows to find this killer himself—but as plague approaches, his beloved tutor Brother Peter insists they must stay inside the monastery. He turns instead to the women of the village for help, and particularly the enigmatic and beautiful Maud Woodstock—a woman who provokes strong emotions in Oswald.

As he closes in on the killer, Oswald makes a discovery that is so utterly shocking that it threatens to destroy him and his family. Even as plague rages across England and death is at every door, Oswald must kill or be killed. And the discovery will be a secret that haunts him for the rest of his life.

Tags: featured , women writers

Category : How To and Tips

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That sounds like a life- and career-changing course! You shared some great insights that you gleaned from it. I tend to avoid having people read my work when it’s still in the writing stages, because that makes me lose momentum. Kudos to you for being able to do that! Also, THE GOOD DEATH sounds very interesting.

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Curtis Brown Creative is launching a new six-week online Writing TV Drama course.

This exciting new Writing TV Drama course from Curtis Brown Creative – the renowned writing school affiliated to the major literary and talent agency – will teach you the essentials of screenwriting and help you get to work on your own TV drama pilot.

Do you have ambitions to write TV drama? Whether you’re gearing up to start work, or if you’re already writing, this course will teach you the fundamentals for writing a pilot. Learn the language of TV drama – how it’s constructed and how to talk about it to the industry, with expert advice from screenwriter and showrunner, Colin Teevan ( Das Boot , Rebellion ).

Drawing on his substantial experience as a TV dramatist and showrunner, Colin teaches a professional approach to screenwriting that will mark you out as someone who understands what producers and commissioners want. Discover how to use an established genre to turn the story that you want to write. Establish the world of your drama on the page so that a production team will get everything they need to know – but crucially no more than that. Put your protagonist in a hostile situation and figure out what they must do to overcome it. And learn how everything on the screen talks – not just dialogue.

By the end of this course, you should have written at least the first 10-12 pages of your script and have the confidence to be able to deliver your pilot to an industry standard.

This course comprises six modules with pre-recorded teaching videos and substantial notes by Colin Teevan. You’ll learn the fundamentals of screenwriting, including an understanding of what should definitely go in your script and what should be left out, how to write compelling action and zingy dialogue, and how to pitch your work to the industry. Students will take part in weekly screenwriting tasks and will be invited to upload them, give and receive peer-to-peer feedback, and discuss the week’s topics with their fellow students in CBC’s private online learning platform.

An expert CBC editor will give brief written feedback on several of the students’ practical assignments every week, with all students receiving feedback on one of their screenwriting tasks. Students are also given the option to purchase additional end-of-course feedback from our expert editors.

Televisual readers get £20 off this course when they use code TELEVISUAL20. Discount valid for £20 off the full price of the six-week online Writing TV Drama course. Not to be used in conjunction with any other offer. Discount cannot be retroactively applied. Expires 31 Dec 2024.

Jon Creamer

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• Curtis Brown Creative Course Commences

| Published on: Dec 5, 2018 | Categories: News |

I was chuffed to bits to learn that I’d been sponsored to attended the 3-month Novel Writing Course run by Curtis Brown Creative, and which began earlier in the year.

It is taught by Charlotte Mendelson, and takes place at their illustrious Haymarket office.  For me, CBC were always the best training provider – they not only provide first-rate teaching, but also have so many industry contacts.

The format is, each Wednesday, Charlotte takes a session, which is split into two sections – section one looks at an area of writing, section two workshops student’s work.

My opening from ‘Brown Eyed Girl’ was critiqued in week 2, and was nerve-wracking but so helpful – I’ve basically come away from it and figured out what my story is about. Helpful, yes?

They were even kind enough to write a short piece about me. Yikes.

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Curtis Brown Creative

Head Office

Cunard House London SW1Y 4LR United Kingdom

Book, Newspaper and Magazine publishing

We're the creative writing school affiliated to the major UK literary and talent agency. Curtis Brown Creative has been helping writers tell their stories for over 12 years. We launched in 2011 with our flagship London-based Writing Your Novel courses with the aim of finding talented writers, and helping them to get the best out of their writing and to develop their novels to their full potential. 

We put together a teaching team of acclaimed authors to work with our students, and we brought in literary agents from Curtis Brown and its sister agency C&W to demystify the publishing industry and empower our students to pitch their novels with confidence.

Fast forward a decade later and we now run lots of courses online as well as in London. We still run our three- and six-month courses for small groups of talented writers who are selected from a much larger group of applicants to work on their novels – and in 2020 we also unveiled an elite course on Writing an Original TV Drama Serial, with input from Curtis Brown’s film/TV agents.

But we also now offer a growing range of short online courses at a lower price point – covering not only novel writing , but also lots of other genres and forms, such as short stories , memoir writing , and writing for children. These shorter courses are designed to help you explore your potential and acquire new writing skills, no matter your current level. There’s no applications process for these courses – you can just enrol for the course of your choice, such as our four-week online Creative Writing for Beginners course, to start your writing journey with us.

We're proud to say that over the past few years, many of our alumni have gained deals with major publishers. Some of our former students have written international bestsellers, others have won prizes and yet more have gained representation with literary agents and are working to prepare their novels for submission to publishers. And whether they end up getting agents and publishers or not, it’s wonderful to see a great many groups of our students continuing to support each other’s writing years after their courses are over. The act of writing is an end in and of itself.

We are also dedicated to amplifying under-represented voices. In 2020, supported by the Curtis Brown and C&W agencies, we launched the Breakthrough Writers’ Programme , offering creative writing courses, mentoring , and scholarships for writers facing barriers to entry when it comes to taking our courses and/or getting published. All opportunities are free for the writers taking part.

We are passionate about finding and developing talent, and that hasn’t changed one jot from where we began ten years ago. These days, CBC is better equipped than ever to help talented writers: We now have two former commissioning editors from major publishing houses on our close-knit team, plus a former senior book publicist – adding further layers of industry experience to our unique literary agent-led academy.      

Not everyone who comes on one of our courses will end up with an agent and a publisher (no one said this was going to be easy). But we can help you get the best out of your writing. You’re intrinsically alone as a writer, but you don’t have to be lonely.

Organisation size

1-10 employees

Wanted occupations

Editorial / Writing / Storytelling

Frequently asked questions

Do i have to apply online or can i send in a paper copy of my cv down, get in touch.

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