online creative writing course

online creative writing course

Enhancing Your Writing Skills: Online Creative Writing Course

1. Introduction to Creative Writing

Whether you are new to the craft or just looking to sharpen your skills, this course will discuss the various genres of creative writing: Fiction, Creative Nonfiction, Poetry, and Short Fiction. The content and assignments for the various genres will not be discussed in this overview. For that information, you should refer to the specific genre page in the left-hand menu. The course is an introduction to what you already do on a daily basis: writing. Each of us has a “repertoire” of writing already at our disposal, through cultural forms, journals, letters, and “school writing.” All of these writing experiences involve learning, and the course publicizes that theme by providing relevant instruction to help you understand the genre of writing in question. Any given genre is an alternative way of ordering human experience. At the heart of this course is the personal essay. A chronological approach, which has much to recommend it, is still residue of the influence of the literature course: it suggests that the central activity in learning to write is learning to read. Chances are if you are taking this course you are doing a lot of reading already. But the central activity of this writing course is writing, and we will begin with what the writing you are doing right now. The only “creative writing” you have done is in your jotter at school and the “creative writing” promised here is not necessarily the right option for you. But try to keep a spirit of open experimentation as you move into the various genres, remembering that a genre is a cultural artifact, not a form of nature. You will be asked to keep a journal of free writing throughout and to select pieces for any formal or informal sharing that you are comfortable with. The course comes with one warning: you will be a more accomplished writer at the end, and especially if you are new to the craft, you may find this discouraging. Don’t be disheartened! You have grown more accomplished at many things in your life, and gained most of your new skills without realizing. Writing is no exception.

2. Developing Characters and Plot

Once you have your characters’ profiles completed, keep them in a safe place. You will find them easy to refer back to, and consistency is a key benefit in using character profiles. Now that you have detailed characters, getting them into a story is the next step. Character interaction and conflict is what brings a story to life. Often, your characters will lead you into writing a story based on their character rather than one you have pre-planned. This is okay too and sometimes the most exciting way to write a story. If you find that you have no problems getting your characters into and out of situations, it is likely you have strong character and story development.

– Name – Age – Appearance – Personality – Strengths/Weaknesses – Role in the story – Background/History – Additional Information

This section focuses on character and plot development and its relation to story structure. At this point, you will brainstorm and complete a profile for each character. By completing a character profile, you will find that you will be able to write a more realistic and in-depth character. Preparing a character profile is one way to avoid creating flat, unrealistic characters. A character profile is a detailed description of a fictional person. You can complete a profile on anyone involved in the story (i.e. hero, villain), not just the main character. Information to include in a character profile:

3. Mastering Dialogue and Description

“Why do you want to do that?” [said by Tom]

Sue began to absentmindedly toy with her meal. “I am thinking of becoming a vegetarian,” she said. Tom caught her eye.

3.2.1 Speech Tags and Action Beats. This is defining who said what and in what manner within the context of the scene. There are many different methods of speech attribution, but the key in all is clarity and economy. For example, “I am thinking about becoming a vegetarian,” said Sue. “Why?” replied Tom. The best method is to use action beats; it gets the same point across and brings the characters to life.

3.1 Dialogue. To truly understand the concept of dialogue as it relates to storytelling, we must consider that conversation is a series of questions and answers. Each question is a request for information, each answer is information. This will not only advance the conversation but advance the story. Furthermore, because dialogue consists of the intention of the speaker more than the spoken words themselves, it can save you time in telling the story. For example, I can tell a story of a man who is too nervous to ask a girl for a dance, and all the rejection he faces while trying to mumble an invitation. But I may tell it more effectively by having the man explain it in frustration to a friend, or even his mother. Because I’m only relaying this story to get to an exercise at the end of the rejection, a good writer will consider the most economic way to get the point across.

Course overview. The art of good storytelling lies in two areas: dialogue, which captures the essence and intention of the speaker, and description, with its sensory and emotive elements. This course will show you how to succeed through thorough knowledge of a wide range of different writing techniques. By doing the varied exercises, you will learn the different ways to tell a story effectively, in a way that will lead the reader to share your vision. By the end of the course, you will have gained more confidence in your writing and a clearer understanding of how to write a successful story.

4. Exploring Different Writing Styles

Writing is a craft. Each writer is an artisan. A pen can be a chisel or a scalpel – and words the bricks or the living flesh. No matter what writing style is chosen, the important thing to remember is that the words and phrases are chosen carefully with the intention to sculpt an image in the reader’s mind. Still, with many different ways to paint a picture, writing can be a very diverse and flexible art form. This course will examine the different styles and genres of writing. Each area will have advice, exercises and assigned tasks. We are concerned here with mixing the various stylistic aspects of writing with the many different kinds of fiction. Coming out of this we hope to provide students with a better understanding of what genre they are best acquainted with and more confidence in crossing genre borders. There are many different definitions of what exactly ‘style’ is in terms of writing. Some say it is an attempt to relay a feeling to the reader, whilst others believe it is a method of writing that is so unique to the writer that the words alone can identify its creator. For the purposes of this course, we consider style to be the way in which one writes or tells a story. This can be developed through a method, e.g., use of first person or through an approach to a particular piece of work. What we want to do is experiment with that style in relation to different genres of writing.

5. Polishing Your Writing: Editing and Revision Techniques

The most usual method is outlining. Well-educated people do not suppose that writing is a linear process where one thing happens after another. If it were, then all you had to do was write it down and look at it. But writing is a complex, recursive, multi-dimensional activity in which it is often impossible to proceed from point A to point B in a simple logical sequence. So the problem with looking at a piece of writing is very often just seeing what is there instead of what is not quite there yet in the mind of the writer. An outline does capture content, but there is something artificial and contrived about an outline that tends to inhibit your movement between notes and the text and does not allow for unexpected discoveries.

Effective writing requires good feedback. No other psychology, or art, or recreation so informs and enlarges its content right on the spot as does writing. But most young writers have not yet developed a way to get the useful information for their work.