Creative Writing Crash Course: Prompts, Syntax, Material, Templates, and more!

This course is designed to enhance a student’s grasp of creative writing with a primary focus on fiction literature. The course will cover many exercises for enriching one’s writing. We will explore how to break through writer’s block, use prompts to give ourselves momentum, be purposeful with our syntax, develop material through day-to-day observations, bolster our efforts with templates, and find the uncanny difference between showing and telling.
The class format will have some lecture, but I think the best lessons are learned in action. There will be much writing, sharing, and discussing. Sharing one’s first drafts can be nerve-racking, but the course will be a great context in which to explore those areas. There will be assignments between classes to enhance the learning, but they shouldn’t be too cumbersome.
My teaching style is very conversational. I want to bolster or revitalize each student’s love of the written word, so I will invite them to reflect (in writing of course) in the growth-oriented space that will be our class. While class materials are well outlined, there is plenty of wiggle room for exploring related topics or focusing more on one that caught the students’ interest.
Overall, everyone will get to write a lot, share a bit, and explore a great wealth of writing tools.