Curtis Brown Creative Recenzje 

I have done a number of online courses with CBC this year during lockdown and am always satisfied with the quality of the materials and the supportive group atmosphere. The six-week novel writing courses have helped me to hone my ideas into a workable plot with rounded characters.

The outcome from taking these courses is that I have developed an idea that was lying dormant and gained useful tools for honing it into shape. The weekly tasks have meant putting my ideas out there and I've learnt a lot from feedback from the readers and other writers on the course. It has also encouraged me to read fiction from a writerly point of view.

As always, Curtis Brown Creative course materials are brilliantly structured. I have just completed the Curtis Brown Creative Online Memoir writing course. It was just what I needed, finding a way to write in such a way that a balance is achieved in telling the story in manner that appeals to the reader. How do you indicate to the reader a combination of facts in a story, in a narrative style that is true to the essence of the story yet is not factual. I loved watching the videos by the course tutor Cathy Rentzenbrink; her wealth of experience and examples serve as a tool for building the story. I love that the Online course allows us to learn at our pace and the writing community forum is absolutely fantastic.

Thought the course was very high quality, easy to follow and excellent resources. Great for objectivity about writing and learning how to find the crux of the story to write a better pitch.

I have just completed an online short story course with Curtis Brown Creative. It worked like a dream for me and I would highly recommend CBC to anyone who is contemplating an online writing course.

The videos and resources are helpful and especially the interaction with other students is very encouraging. However despite the course being led by an agent, there is hardly any interaction and would not describe this course as being an online equivalent to a course which you would normally attend. There was no interaction via Zoom and only one feedback throughout the course. (Since receipt of the email from Curtis Brown Creative - I have replied to them in more detail regarding my review).

I recently completed a course with Cynan Jones, and I am currently working on Writing a Memoir with Cathy Rentzenbrink. Both tutors are exceptional. I highly recommend the CBC online courses.

I highly recommend this course to any serious professional who wants to get an upper edge. I have no negatives to comment about this company all was good.

Super, inclusive course that required only commitment and enthusiasm from students. We were rewarded with a well constructed course that benefitted everyone; from debutants to experienced writers in all genres.

The Edit and Pitch Your Novel course exceeded my expectations. It was exceedingly well thought-out, the pacing was perfect, and the advice was spot-on. It was also designed to give you the tools to do this for anything you wrote in the future, which is very valuable.
Unexpected bonus: Coursemates were lovely, enthusiastic and willing to devote a lot of time to going through each other's entries and giving useful feedback. CBC were good at monitoring for any questions or issues they could help with.

I have recently finished the Curtis Brown 3-month selective novel writing course and can safely say it was a transformative experience for my novel, and for me too! The teaching, feedback and support you get on this programme is outstanding, and I would recommend it to anyone who is serious about writing.

Would highly recommend this action-packed six week course. Full of great advice and practical support, it will definitely give your writing a much better chance of being read and you can't ask fairer than that.

The first time I've ever signed up for a creative writing course and I am so pleased I found this.

Has the feel of one-on-one tuition and there were many points made that I could identify with.

Having other people on the course providing feedback on your work was an excellent experience.

I wish I'd found about the course before. Very useful and informative.

Comprehensive online creative writing course that's tuned into prevalent publishing trends. Highly recommended.

Brillaint course- excellent teaching, easy to access and a great online forum with like minded people.

An extremely helpful course that will really enhance any writer's work. Highly recommended.

So pleased I signed up to this 10 week course with CBC. The timing of the Lockdown certainly helped in providing the necessary time, but in fact the learning videos and set tasks required minimum time, and experiential learning is fantastic. The student forum was supportive and very friendly. Highly recommended.

Since the substance of the base material of the course is widely available elsewhere, and CBC makes it very clear (quite rightly) that taking a selective course does not guarantee an agent at the end of it, the value of such a course lies in the quality of the personal tuition and encouragement of the tutor. When the tutor has zero interest in the work of most of the students, fails to read it in any detail, and responds aggressively to any challenges made to her slapdash work, this course represents very poor value for money.

I would be sympathetic to CBC's dependence on this single point of failure had they monitored the quality of the course, intervened appropriately and immediately, and been consistent and upfront in how they managed the fallout.

By the end of my course, a third of the students had fallen by the wayside (astonishing, given the cost of the course.). Depending on how aggressively they complained, students were pacified with different levels of compensation, and, I understand, told not to tell anyone else what they'd got. I was promised that all feedback would be collected via a feedback form distributed at the end of the course, since my main concern was that no other group would be subjected to this experience. I'm still waiting for the form.

I can't comment on the quality of tuition on other CBC courses, but my experience of CBC management in this instance was extremely poor.

Were all of the other reviews invited? Having taken one of CBC's six month novel writing courses online, I'm incredulous at the glowing responses here.

My experience:

The tutor did not read any of my three submissions prior to giving "feedback" or even prior to our Skype tutorials. This was the case for multiple other people in the course. Throughout the six months, it was clear in the tutor's posted responses that she had no idea what many of her students' submissions were about (because she hadn't read them), what was happening in the novels of these students, or even the names of their characters. Her feedback notes were shockingly garbled and some of her sentences so riddled with grammar inaccuracies that it was a struggle to figure out what she was actually trying to say. Many of her emails were the same. On occasion, she half-heartedly attempted to allude to passages or elements of published novels she had clearly not read. The tutor was churlish and vindictive in her replies to certain students on the online forum. The only value to the course became the feedback students gave each other, and frankly this was not worth the exorbitant fee because there are so many free online sources at which writers may receive feedback from other writers.

Furthermore, despite the fact that this was a small group of students on a six month course, the tutor couldn't get the names of several students right and persisted in calling some students by the wrong names right up to the last week.

Some people on our course did complain to CBC, and the tutor then spent the last two weeks of the course going back to edit older posts. Or maybe someone from CBC was editing her older posts? In any case, the tutor's ongoing struggle with writing clearly in her feedback, posts, and emails make her entirely unsuitable to teaching in an online format. Presumably she IS capable of writing clearly because she has published several novels: what, then, was going on in this course? CBC had no business taking money from students for this mess, and students certainly spent a great deal of time discussing what could be going wrong with our tutor.

The instructional readings on the course forum consisted of fragments of basic writing concepts that are freely available on the internet. You can read the same ideas, presented in greater detail with examples, in multiple books and guides on the craft, all of which cost significantly less than the price of this course. Instead of paying an exorbitant fee to read a few watered-down, basic ideas on a CBC forum, I suggest taking a look at the tried-and-true Strunk and White classic, The Elements of Style, or at books about writing by Anne Lamott, Natalie Goldberg, William Zinsser, Stephen King, or others. The CBC course does not present any concepts in much depth and the tutor was not invested enough to discuss any concepts at length or to any useful degree.

To be fair, the tutor did seem to spend a great deal of time on two students on the course. I had the sense that the rest of us were there only to provide tuition fees.

I believe this online course is a cash cow for CBC. CBC admin: you should be ashamed for taking so much money from people, and then failing to ensure adequate quality control of tuition and course content.

Interestingly, one of the students who was routinely dismissed by the tutor has secured a literary agent of her own. This should offer some hope to other students who have been exploited, disrespected, and ignored by this tutor.

Summary: this course was of shockingly poor quality and the tutor's blatant unwillingness to even read the work of some students was disheartening and unscrupulous. CBC saw what was going on and allowed it to continue for the duration of the course, and this tutor is still teaching the same course.

CBC admin told us they would be contacting each person on our course to ask for feedback after the course had concluded, but they never did this, presumably because they had received enough complaints from students during the course that they knew there would be very little positive feedback. CBC, on the chance that you simply forgot to contact me and my fellow course members for this, you may consider this review my end-of-course feedback.

Edit/Reply to CBC's Response:

CBC wrote: "We would like to discuss your concerns in depth so we can gain a full understanding of what happened during your course..."

My Response: Actually, you did have a full understanding of what happened during my course. Multiple people on the course--including me--complained to CBC admin about what was happening. Two people who took the course in previous years with the same tutor assure me they had complained. You knew.

None of this is new. You are inviting my response now only because I have posted this in a public forum.

The course brought me into the midst of the industry - a great shortcut with respect to learning about what agents are looking for. The tutors also encouraged students to learn from each other and, since the ending of the course, being amongst a group of committed writers has been really important in helping me finish my manuscript. The CBC team are great and really supportive and have been very helpful in the submissions process and will continue to be with the second novel. I'm very glad I did the course. My confidence and understanding has grown since having had the tutor, agent and student feedback.

I first did the online six-month novel writing course and the experience was incredible. The quality of written and video materials was second to none alongside our tutor's supportive but honest feedback that made ask so much more of myself as a writer. Having the space to work with other writers and read and analyse their work was invaluable and enhanced my own writing in a way that I hadn't anticipated. I learnt so much! The support from the CBC team was brilliant and I still feel a part of the CBC family.
I also did the three-month editing course and again the notes and guidance I received really helped me shape and edit my manuscript to the point where I felt I could submit it.
The relationship between CBC and Curtis Brown means you're working with experts in their field who know publishing inside out and who want you to succeed. I would certainly consider future courses.