The Creative Writing PhD consists of two elements. The first is a creative element. This can be prose fiction, a novel or a collection of short stories of around 80,000 words. It can also be a collection of poetry. The PhD also has a critical element, roughly 30,000 to 50,000 words of research on a related subject useful to the writing of the creative element or to seeing the work in its literary context. The PhD will require the student to develop their research skills and, to this end, they will be able to undertake a research skills audit and to attend seminars and workshops on research methods in the first year: in this way, students undertaking a PhD in Creative Writing will participate in School-wide training seminars which will develop useful research, teaching and IT skills, as well as seminars in relation to publication, authors' rights etc, which will be particularly useful to students of creative writing.