Abstract: As a teaching method, a creative writing workshop is comprised of teachers, students, teaching assistants and external experts, etc. Its teaching content mainly consists of explaining writing knowledge and techniques, discussing students' works and individuals' writing practice. Its teaching objectives are to acquire writing knowledge, improve creativity and writing ability and accomplish literary works. All of these three aspects are essential for a creative writing workshop. From organizing a workshop, stirring up the activeness of participants, observing the disciplines of the workshop, to accomplishing teaching tasks and realizing teaching objectives-the whole link and multi-dimension collaboration and interaction of these factors form the operation mechanism of a workshop. The workshop teaching method puts forward strict requirements for the expertise and scientificity of writing teaching. However, less effective reflection on or improvement of this teaching method, caused by the tradition of creative writing discipline that underscores practice while neglects theory, has existed for a long time. Its many practical problems have also resulted in its negative effect and reputation. In order to optimize the teaching method of a creative writing workshop, we ought to first of all examine the content factors and operation mechanism of a creative writing workshop and reflect on its existing problems and their causes.

Key words: creative writing, workshop teaching method, content factors, operation mechanism, expertise, scientificity