All Creative Writing graduates will be able to:

1. Demonstrate fundamental critical thinking skills in the analysis of creative work, whether published or student work. Such skills include close reading, analysis of texts in different genres, and the reading of drafts with revision as a goal. Students must demonstrate this ability to think critically in workshop discussions, in their written comments, and in assessing their own work.
2. Demonstrate proficiency at sentence-level writing, including syntax and grammar.
3. Demonstrate proficiency with the basic elements of form in genres in which they studied; for example, scene writing in fiction, nonfiction and dramatic writing, and the poetic line for poets.
4. Demonstrate an understanding of formal structure, including dramatic structure, in the genres they've studied. This includes the shape of the whole work: frame story, linear story, non-linear story; various forms of poems; the act structure as it related to stage and screen; the way the whole work of writing in shaped and why it is shaped that way. For students of non-fiction, demonstrate an understanding of the indispensable importance of integrity in research, and the application of ethical standards and principles in writing.
5. Demonstrate ability to move work from the generation of an idea to a draft through the stages of revision.
6. Demonstrate knowledge of the literary traditions in which they write, building on the six courses students take for the literature portion of their major.