This article describes an undergraduate course in creative writing offered by the Department of English at the University of Hong Kong. Most students in the course have Chinese as a native language and have received their secondary education in English. They have had extensive practice in writing English in connection with their studies. The course is offered during the last two years of a three-year degree program, and the actual writing instruction is preceded by exposure to various literary styles and by analysis of contemporary English writings. The student is allowed to concentrate on one genre or experiment with several. This paper specifically deals with prose works, and focuses on the special problems faced by the students as a result of having to write in a second language. Many of these problems are directly related to the setting, the characters and the themes that the students choose, which can be grouped into the western-oriented, the traditional Chinese-oriented, and the present-day-oriented. The language necessarily varies according to a munber of factors, including age, sex, educational level, social status, and geographical origin. Students experience more problems in capturing the language of situations unfamiliar to them than with technical writing details. (CLK)