Creative Writing and Film

Creative writing and film is a combination that brings together two of the most significant storytelling arts of the modern period, one rooted in the literary tradition and the other in the visual language of the moving image. Creative writing develops your ability to craft fiction, poetry, narrative non-fiction, and screenwriting with skill and intention, attending to voice, structure, character, and language. Film studies gives you the critical and historical framework to analyse how cinema works, how it has developed as an art form and industry, and how filmmakers across different traditions have used the camera, editing, and sound to construct meaning.

At the University of Reading, this three-year full-time degree includes a sandwich year, a year abroad, and work placement opportunities, providing professional and international experience alongside your studies. The combination of creative practice and critical analysis encourages you to develop as both a writer and a reader of texts and films, understanding craft from the inside while also examining it from a scholarly perspective. You will write across multiple forms and receive feedback through workshop settings that develop your ability to give and receive constructive criticism.

The film studies strand develops your visual literacy and your understanding of cinema as an institution, from Hollywood genre films to world cinema and experimental work.

Graduates of creative writing and film programmes pursue careers in publishing, journalism, screenwriting, editing, arts administration, film criticism, broadcasting, and education. The combination of writing skills and film literacy is valued in the media and creative industries, and the sandwich year and placements provide direct professional experience. Many graduates continue into postgraduate study in creative writing, film, journalism, or education, and some develop careers as authors, screenwriters, or filmmakers alongside other professional work.