14.1 Guidelines

The Creative Writing thesis should be designed to address an overarching research question, answering this partly through academic research, and partly through a creative component. The creative element could be a cycle of poems, novel, section of a novel, novella, play script, or collection of short stories. The word length of this section will normally be between 50,000 and 70,000 words, depending on the genre.

In addition, there should be an analytical element of 10,000 - 30,000 words. This should place the creative element in its academic and/or theoretical context, and show explicitly how the thesis as a whole leads to new substantially improved insights.

In all other respects, the thesis must conform to the same standards required for a conventional PhD submission. It should normally be no longer than 80,000 words in length, make an original contribution to knowledge, demonstrate appropriate research methods and training and be worthy of publication in whole or in part.