Greetings all

I hope this is not too off the wall....
I would greatly appreciate any feedback - but if it is off the wall
Feel free to shoot me down :(

I have a 2.1 Masters in International Politics.
However my background is several years living all over the world working in an industry that gave me
* significant direct contact with many celebs - Oprah, Eddie Murphy, Liam Neeson, Politicians, A list Business persons.
* it is also an industry where one is exposed to several vices - you name it

Thinking along the lines of a better packaged "Hotel Babylon" but a more subtle message,
Could I develop a novel as a PhD thesis?

Would a serious academic buy in to such a project.

I have the bones of a structure, chapters everything.
But I want to work on the complexity of its message and in addition market the concept appropriately.
In addition, I dont want this to fall into the category a hedonistic smut peddle or indeed a plastic celeb bio.

Am I insane?
Or if I structured the Project design appropriately, could I win the buy in of a serious Literature Academic

Any thoughts, productive or acerbic are equally welcome

I have heard of PhD students in creative writing producing a novel as their thesis, or at least a significant part of it - normally the creative writing part would be accompanied by an appropriate analysis. But generally such students would be expected to have an academic background in the field, including a relevant taught Masters. Try googling for "phd creative writing uk".

Here in Australia, I know that you can do a 'novel' PhD. The catch is, you write both the novel and a thesis explaining your rationale and the critical theory behind it and with which you've sought to engage. I believe the novel and thesis are usually roughly the same length? But I'm not sure of that. If you look up Monash University in Melbourne, I believe they have that kind of program.

However, you might be better off just writing the novel and sending out enquiries to literary agents (with a view to publishing it).

I have various friends who did PhDs in creative writing. There are some very good courses in the UK but without a background in English lit. for the theoretical side and without previous publishing experience (poetry or short stories, for example) I wouldn't have thought a PhD was the best way of going about things. Creative writing PhDs are difficult to find funding for and I've known people fail too. However, try contacting some courses and finding out about their requirements. You'll almost certainly have to produce pieces of creative writing for the application so if you aren't writing already you need to start finding out whether you can. Reading extensively in modern fiction will also benefit you in knowing about what's already out there, styles you like and how your work will be different from the many many novels on the market.

Thanks all for your help!

Hi Lopaka

You don't mention whether you have any experience of writing fiction? This is going to be the first question anyone asks you, and if you don't then I would suggest a PhD is not the way forward, at least at first. I suspect that unless you have substantial evidence of writing ability and experience - and by that I mean writing fiction, not academic writing - you will struggle to find a PhD place. Writing a novel is not simply about having an idea or a structure for a novel, it's about the writing itself as well. I know - I've written six!

Have you thought about doing an MA in Creative Writing as a first step? Some of the courses have a more literary-criticism focus while others have a craft-led focus on developing your writing style and abilities. I did an MA in Creative Writing 10 years ago (yikes!! doesn't seem that long!) which was very good with a strong craft focus and I learnt a huge amount about the fiction writing process from that.

The other alternative is to just go ahead and write the novel without it being part of an academic course. If your intention is to develop a career as a writer then that's the more traditional way to go about it - having a PhD in creative writing would not necessarily make it any easier to get published!

Hope that helps, and good luck with it!

Batfink