09 August 2018

How to create great characters in fiction

by Anna Davis From the Agents, Writing Tips

With the CBC team all heading off for our summer holidays, we wanted to leave you with some writing tips to give you some food for fiction-thought across the next couple of weeks while we’re away – plus some writing exercises for those of you who want to keep working while you’re lying by the pool […]

09 August 2018

CBC celebrates 50 commercial publishing deals for its novel-writing students

by Katie Smart Novels by CBC Alumni, Student Successes

This week at Curtis Brown Creative we reached our half-century, our golden anniversary … that’s right, our 50th former novel-writing student has gone on to get a major publishing deal and we couldn’t be more thrilled. We are so proud of each and every one of our students, and here’s to the next 50! In honour of […]

08 August 2018

What the literary agents are reading this summer

by Katie Smart From the Agents

At the start of the British heatwave we shared some sizzling summer reads from our recently published former creative writing course students (check out the blog here). Now that the summer is in full swing we thought it would be the perfect time to ask the literary agent teams at Curtis Brown and C+W the all important […]

03 August 2018

Dawn Goodwin: ‘the course fuelled my motivation to finish the novel’

by Dawn Goodwin From Our Students, Guest Blog

Dawn Goodwin studied on the very first of our online writing courses in 2013 – alongside fellow novelists Alice Clark-Platts and Catherine Bennetto. Her debut novel The Accident a gripping psychological thriller was published last year by Head of Zeus imprint Aria. Here Dawn discusses how the CBC course helped her to finish that first novel and then go on to write her second thriller The Pupil  (published […]

03 August 2018

Writing female friendships: ‘the best relationships in fiction are hard won’

by Jo Jakeman From Our Students, Guest Blog, Opinion

Jo Jakeman studied on our six-month online novel-writing course in the spring of 2016, taught by CBC veteran Lisa O’Donnell. Her debut novel Stick and Stones was snapped up at auction by Harvill Secker in a high-profile deal, and came out in hardback on July 12th. Sticks and Stones is a thriller centered on three very different women all […]

02 August 2018

#WriteCBC: Writing tip and writing task from Laura Marshall

by Anna Davis Events, Writing Tips

Yes, it’s that time already! Welcome to the second of our monthly #WriteCBC day-long Twitter challenges! Today – Thursday 2nd August – bestselling author and CBC alumna Laura Marshall is in the hot seat with a writing tip and task. Join in on Twitter @cbcreative to potentially win a place on one of our 6-week online courses – or just for fun! Read […]

26 July 2018

David O'Connell, Photo by Dave Warren

David O’Connell: ‘a bad rhyme is like nails on a blackboard’

by Katie Smart Author Interviews

David O’Connell, is an author-illustrator and he leads our new Writing a Children’s Picture Book course. His first illustrated children’s chapter book, Monster & Chips, came out in 2013, and he worked with Sarah McIntyre (who leads the Illustrating a Children’s Picture Book course) on the children’s picture book Jampires. He has also collaborated with Sam Watkins, Francesca Gambatesa and Tom Nicoll. His latest children’s chapter book […]

20 July 2018

Current opportunities for aspiring authors from Curtis Brown Creative

by Katie Smart Events

At CBC it’s very important to us that we continue to offer opportunities for aspiring authors. Whether through creative writing competitions or even fully-funded scholarships for writers on our selective entry courses. We want to inspire you to get writing and get involved with what we do. Here is a round-up of the scholarships and competitions […]

20 July 2018

Jenny Quintana

From creative writing student to author of Waterstones Crime Thriller of the Month

by Katie Smart

In the past few years Waterstones has proved its ability to ‘make’ a book, through its influential ‘book of the month’ promotion. Each month the bookshop picks four paperbacks: a fiction and non-fiction title, a children’s book and a thriller. It was this time last year that Jane Harper’s The Dry held the coveted ‘thriller’ spot, which was key […]

20 July 2018

Sarah McIntyre, photo by Dave Warren

Sarah McIntyre: ‘Likes don’t pay the rent’

by Katie Smart Author Interviews

We caught up with author-illustrator Sarah McIntyre who is one of the tutors on our brand new online children’s picture book courses. Sarah leads our Illustrating a Children’s Picture Book course, her solo picture books include There’s a Shark in the Bath, Dinosaur Firefighters, and The New Neighbours. She has also worked with writers like David O’Connell (who leads our new […]