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Accessibility statement
Qualification dates
StartEnd
03 Oct 2026Jun 2027
This module develops your writing ability by widening your range of literary forms and genres and your knowledge of structure and style. You'll work on the forms introduced in Creative writing (A215), learn to write for stage, audio and screen, and explore how skills and techniques from one form might cross over to others: How does a short story become a film? How are scriptwriting techniques employed in poems? Which of the novelist’s approaches might a memoirist usefully borrow? With guidance on structuring compelling narratives and cultivating distinctive voices, this is a natural progression from the OU level 2 module.
This module is structured in four parts. At the core of the module is a handbook that takes you week-by-week through methods, readings and writing exercises. This handbook covers the first three parts of the module. The fourth part is a period of independent study and project work. The handbook is complemented by online study material containing audios, videos, animations and other interactive exercises to enhance your learning, such as interviews with writers and discussions with publishing industry professionals. Online tutorials offer additional opportunities to receive guidance and support from tutors.
Part 1: Ways of writing

You'll begin by looking at different approaches to writing. In particular, you'll focus on the influence of genre, world-building in dystopian and fantasy fiction, setting in life writing and narrative in poetry. Work includes readings and writing exercises in fiction, poetry, and life writing.
Part 2: Dramatic writing

You'll progress to explore writing techniques for three dramatic media: stage, screen and audio, which will illustrate the narrative strengths and constraints of each medium. You'll examine the conventional layouts for these media, and this part will also deal with dramatic principles connected to dialogue, subtext, status and exposition, as well as media-specific elements such as sets for the stage, aural contrast in audio and montage in film. You’ll also explore and practise the techniques involved in adapting work in other forms to script.
Part 3: Developing style and structure

You'll look at how some of the methods used in dramatic writing can improve fiction writing, life writing and poetry, and vice versa. You’ll consider the inner world in life writing and dramatic techniques in poetry. This section goes on to explore writing approaches in a wide-ranging fashion, covering time, voice, long and short-form work, theme and structure, and the uses of rhetoric and analogy. You’ll focus on improving your approach to structure, style and voice in all forms.
Part 4: Independent study

This final part involves working on a larger project, culminating in the presentation of an end-of-module assessment comprising a substantial piece of creative writing in one of the forms taught in the module – fiction, poetry, life writing or drama.
As in Creative writing (A215), the emphasis is very much on practice through guided activities, although as the module progresses, you will increasingly be expected to generate and develop your own ideas without reliance on the study materials. In comparison to the OU level 2 module, the emphasis will be on working independently to enhance and improve your approach to structure, style and voice. You'll spend longer developing, editing and redrafting your work.
Online tutor-group forums will enable peer-group discussion of some of your work. You'll be expected to engage in these activities, giving impersonal and informed evaluations of your own and others’ work through constructive criticism. Some of the tutor-marked assignments will require evidence of engagement on the online forum.
This module builds on the explicit skills taught in Creative writing (A215), which you should ideally have completed or equivalent study before embarking on this module.
If this is your first creative writing module, then ‘equivalent study’ would comprise preparation, including our Creative Writing Tasters and Exercises, which include interviews with writers, sample writing exercises and links to other creative writing study at the OU.
If you have any doubt about the suitability of the module, please speak to an adviser.
You are also strongly advised to prepare for the module by reading Creative Writing: A workbook with readings (2nd edition).
You’ll get help and support from an assigned tutor throughout your module.
They’ll help by:
Online tutorials run throughout the module. While they’re not compulsory, we strongly encourage you to participate. Where possible, we’ll make recordings available.
Course work includes:
You’ll be provided with the printed module handbook, which is the principal guide to your learning, and have access to a module website, which includes:
The OU strives to make all aspects of study accessible to everyone, and this Accessibility Statement outlines what studying A363 involves. You should use this information to inform your study preparations and any discussions with us about how we can meet your needs.
To find out more about what kind of support and adjustments might be available, contact us or visit our Disability support website.
Advanced creative writing starts once a year – in October.
This page describes the module that will start in October 2026.
We expect it to start for the last time in October 2035.
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