Have you always wanted to write, but never quite had the courage to start? This free course, Start writing fiction, will give you an insight into how authors create their characters and settings. You will also be able to look at the different genres for fiction.

Do you want to improve your descriptive writing? This free course, Writing what you know, will help you to develop your perception of the world about you and enable you to see the familiar things in everyday life in a new light. You will also learn how authors use their own personal histories to form the basis of their work.

Start writing fiction is a free course that helps you to get started with your own fiction writing, focusing on the central skill of creating characters.

This free course, Creative writing and critical reading, explores the importance of reading as part of a creative writer’s development at the postgraduate level. You will gain inspiration and ideas from examining other writers’ methods, as well as enhancing your critical reading skills. Examples will cover the genres of fiction, creative ...

Writing about the natural world and environment can work wonders for our wellbeing – this article explains how.

This free course, featuring interviews with famous crime fiction authors, explores psychological theory and research on the relationships we form with fictional characters.

Ever wondered about the psychology of literature or stories? Or how a certain narrative might change our attitude or perspective?

What evidence is there supporting the potential of the arts to aid health and wellbeing in both formal and informal settings? 

Can creativity be taught? How far can you be creative when translating other people's work? Listen to translators, authors and creative writing teachers as they explore these and other questions of creativity.

Does reading fiction make people more empathic or do more empathic people tend to read more fiction?

This course introduces you to the basics of describing language. Using examples from English, you’ll learn how words are built, how they fit together to make sentences, and what labels like noun, verb and adjective mean. You’ll see how language patterns in regular ways and how the meaning of a sentence is more than the sum of its parts. This ...

Grammar matters because, combined with vocabulary choice, it is our main way of making meaning. This free course introduces you to one approach used to understand how meanings relate systematically to different aspects of grammar and shows how this deeper understanding can be applied to make everyday communication more effective.