Curtis Brown Creative Reviews 

Good courses that let you be creative while providing a platform to learn essential story-writing techniques from published authors.

A well-structured programme with wonderful people! Our tutor, Ali Shaw, was an excellent guide who gave insightful critique and thoughtful commentary. There was camaraderie and generosity - as I mentioned to our group, after 30 years in the corporate world, it was delightful to be in an environment where everyone was genuinely interested in other people and their successes.

Unfortunately the course has not been updated since 2024. I found myself doing the course I’d done then again.

The course was run by people who know about writing.

The Writing Your Novel - 3 months course was brilliant. The teaching, workshops and one to one tutorials were varied and invaluable. The forum with other course members and our tutor was lively, useful and really fun! i wish I could do it all over again! I know I've made long term writing buddies too.

The bootcamp course worked very well for me as a beginner. In particular it was very motivational: the daily prompts mean you are encouraged to write every day, and post a piece roughly every third day to a forum, where fellow students can comment. The videos and tips to help you structure your writing were short and excellent. The course is not expensive, so worth giving it a try if you're interested in creative writing.

I had an excellent experience with the course I signed up for, the content was very engaging and well managed online. Worth every penny and will definitely be my go to for any further writing courses. Customer service was also very good and response. All round fantastic experience.

The videos were good at conveying important information quickly and directly and the prompts were great. However, while the first day of each 3 day cycle, had a video and the second had a prompt to post in the forum, the third felt a little empty. It would be a paragraph that could have easily been put into one of the videos, as well as a prompt we were asked not to post.

When posting the work to the forum, it's very easy for threads to get lost, thus some writers receive less feedback than others. Some receive no feedback at all, leaving them to wonder if the writing was bad, yet unsure of what was wrong, or if no one saw the post. As soon as someone posts a reply to an author's selection, that thread moves to the top. If the author responds to that post, it will also bump the thread to the top. This makes it very easy to bury other threads.

Thoroughly enjoyable, challenging and educational. In this latter respect especially concerning the commercial faculty which, separate to any wordsmith talent an aspiring writer may hold, is often overlooked as perhaps the paramount necessity.

The course was well thought out and full of useful information. I learned, and have implemented, lots.

Curtis Brown Creative courses are immensely helpful at different stages of drafting, editing and pitching a novel. I would recommend this course without hesitation.

The material and the presentation were excellent.
My only concern was with the amount of feedback received.

I really like that the bootcamp is accessible to people like me who cant afford your more expensive classes. I also like the information and resources and the homework.
What I don't like it how sparse the interaction is. I also wanted more feed back from the instructor or anyone from CBC on the work we are required.
Also, I know this is probably not CBC's fault, but I felt a bias, in that at times, not a single person even read or commented on my work. Unless I went out of my way commenting on someone else's. This was the case in the My Crime Fiction course, with the exception of one person, who was really active.

Hence, I am just posting and don't know if I am on the right track or not.
Suggestions:
1. Perhaps there should just be a moderator who can just write a note of encouragement to others to provide feedback.
2. It could be made a requirement at the start of the class.
3. Either the instructor or the moderator chose two students' work to randomly comment on per lesson.

Writing Bootcamp was intense and productive. The prompts were stimulating and the topics pertinent. I particularly enjoyed reading other participants' writing and receiving their comments on mine. It helped me improve.

A good course. Well paced and helpful with a great many insights into the world of literary agents and debut authors

Succinct practical course packed with information, tasks and feedback mainly from other participants. Really informative.

I did a course on editing and preparing a book for submission - honestly it didn’t really tell me anything I didn’t know or could read for free on blogs, the aspect of a live community to interact with was hardly worth it, and as all the comments were from other students they were sweet but not much use. The tutor was filmed not looking at the camera, which I find really annoying and disengaging, I ended up just reading the transcript rather than watching the videos. There was a promise of some kind of one to one, personalised feedback, but that didn’t materialise at all, which was really the only thing worth paying for. I expect if you hadn’t already looked into the process, it would be useful, but if you have I’d spend your money elsewhere.

Content was delivered thoughtfully but at pace. Some of it was challenging but by delivering the work and having it critiqued by others in the group and the tutor I was able to see the difference those approaches made to my work. I thought the notes were exceptional and expect to use them again and again and to see new things in them as my ability to incorporate them in my work grows. Thanks Anna!

Great instruction and insightful feedback. Wonderful inspiration and encouragement from instructor Lizzie and my fellow writers. Really made me up my came to be in a group of such talent/

The course was exceptionally well organised, the teaching was top notch, and the group of writers created a genuinely stimulating forum for discussing literature. I would recommend this course to anyone serious about developing their writing.