What troubles me when I'm asked the question, "Can creative writing be taught?" - usually asked in a skeptical tone of voice - is not that I can 't find an answer, but trying to figure out why I'm being asked. What do they want me to say? "No, of course it can' t. I just like taking people for a ride. I'm a con artist." Obviously, you can't teach someone to have a talent for storytelling, or a love of language, or how to write extremely well, but there are important lessons to be gotten across that will improve their writing and, at the very least, make it publishable. For me, the best starting point is the habit of close reading, really close, and responding to the language. Forget about grand themes and ethical content, whatever, for the moment and ask if the author writes badly or well. So, writing can be taught through reading, through literature. Then I'd say, when it comes to your own writing, that you need to learn how to edit: to know when to say, "You don't need that word or that sentence. And that whole paragraph can go". It's one of the most important lessons a writing class can teach. As for producing a Tolstoy or a Dickens ... well, people like that tend to get there by their own route.