Want to really sharpen your writing and appreciation of literature? How about trying an Open University course:

Start writing fiction (A174)
Have you ever thought of writing short stories or trying your hand at a novel? This short online course provides a practical introduction to writing fiction. During the course you will be expected to write two short pieces for assessment. These will be marked individually by your tutor who will provide detailed feedback and a grade. You will also have the opportunity to work with your tutor, along with other students, in an online environment. You will read and learn from the works of writers as well as listening to their advice on beginning to write fiction. This is a twelve-week course.

Start writing poetry (A175 )
Have you ever wanted to write poetry but felt mystified about how to go about it? This course will introduce you in a gradual and accessible way to the basic 'tools of the trade'. Through examples, exercises, and games, you will practise poetic devices and methods, get ideas for subject matter, and learn how to edit your work. You will eventually write in a variety of forms from the haiku to the sonnet and in a range of styles including satire and parody. The course will also enhance your reading skills and increase your ability to appreciate contemporary poetry. This is a twelve-week course.

Start writing plays (A176)
Have you ever thought of writing a play? This course will help you develop the necessary skills, so you will be able to tell a story on stage, fully realising the potentials of the medium. Through exercises, reading scripts and by doing longer assignments you will learn how to write scenes and create believable characters. The course will survey various types of performance and you will do exercises which spark your imagination and generate ideas. Eventually you will work on your own short play. Along the way you will learn about script layout and gain a practical vocabulary of dramatic terms. This course should appeal to everyone interested in dramatic writing or creative writing, but also to those seeking to strengthen transferable writing skills. This is a twelve-week course.

Creative writing (A215)
This course takes a student-centred approach to creative writing, offering a range of strategies to help you develop as a writer, and encouraging you to value your own resources of memory, observation and voice. The emphasis is highly practical, with exercises and activities designed to ignite and sustain the writing impulse.

Start writing family history (A173)
This 12 week online course helps you interpret and write about family history. Using sources from different historical periods, you will investigate the changing nature of the family and write about your own family history examining the ways in which the past is remembered and represented.

Start writing for the internet (A171)
Technology for communicating on the internet is developing swiftly. New possibilities and ways of accessing and displaying information create new demands on writers. This course helps you improve your writing for the internet and become a more effective communicator, whether writing emails or web pages. Through exercises and activities, it teaches the principle that communicating effectively on the internet requires sensitivity to the reader and to the special demands of the medium. This course neither assumes nor teaches knowledge of any technological aspects of web design. This is a twelve-week course.

Start writing essays (A172)
Returning to study or coming to it for the first time can be daunting. Many students are frightened of writing essays. This short online course helps you to build confidence through diagnosis of your strengths and weaknesses, analysis of what makes a good essay, structured exercises, practice and feedback. It is ideal for anyone embarking on Open University study in any subject that requires essays. It is also suitable for all other students who want to improve their essay writing. You will receive feedback on your writing and have the opportunity to interact with other students and your tutor in an online conference. This is a twelve-week course.

Approaching Literature (A210)
How do we work out what a text means? How does a play move from page to performance? Study of a variety of texts will give you knowledge and skills with which to tackle such questions. In The realist novel you study four well-known nineteenth-century novels. Romantic writings sets some of the greatest English poetry in its political and cultural context. Then, through writers such as Louisa May Alcott, Alice Walker and Henrik Ibsen, you explore the relationship between Literature and gender. In Shakespeare, Aphra Behn and the canon, Shakespeare is studied alongside the first important woman playwright.

Introduction to humanities (A103)
You will get from this course a lively and varied grounding in the eight disciplines in the Arts Faculty: art history, literature, music, philosophy, classical studies, history, religious studies, and history of science. The subjects are introduced in attractive case studies combined with multidisciplinary sections on the French Revolution and the 1960s. The course will help you to express yourself more clearly and develop the reading, analysis and interpretation skills you need before moving on to more specialised courses at Level 2. It is not necessary to have studied in this area before.