Creative writing programs teach students to compose poems, short stories, novels, and plays. Students learn how to write and edit their work and learn the components of literary genres. They learn to work with edits made by others. They study methods of literary criticism and learn how to market their work.

"It was a dark and stormy night," begins a long-forgotten novel written in 1830. This sentence, however, has become the symbol of the so-important first sentence in a creative work. This sentence needs to delight, intrigue, and entice the reader to continue. As a writer, you must be able to combine inspiration with patient revision and editing to develop, polish, complete, share, and publish your projects.

In most creative writing programs, you take a combination of literature or "craft" courses and workshops. In literature and craft courses, you study different genres of creative writing and how authors put together their work. You also study the elements of writing fiction, poetry, and plays, including scene development, meter, and point of view.

Workshops are courses in which you write original pieces and submit them to your classmates for critique. These courses allow you to practice your craft, from generating ideas to writing first drafts to revising. You also learn how to respond to criticism and work with editors.

Many colleges and universities offer bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees in creative writing. Some two-year colleges offer the first two years of study. Students can often transfer these credits to a four-year school. Master's degrees typically take five or six years of full-time study after high school. Doctoral degree programs typically take three to five years after the master's degree.

Students who major in creative writing may choose concentrations such as:

• Film and Television
• Novels
• Plays
• Poetry
• Short Stories