If you've taken the highly popular FLEX:Creative Writing I, you know to expect fun and engaging instruction, positive feedback, and plenty of classroom interaction. And no -- Creative Writing I is NOT a prerequisite for this class! 

In this series of four video-based sessions, we will analyze and demonstrate the mechanics and thought process of creative writing. Each video contains in-depth explanations of how and why we use various creative writing techniques -- skills that will help your learner achieve a higher overall level of writing while enjoying the actual writing process. 

Week 1: Awesome alliteration! From silent scenes of snow to creepy castles on cliffs -- and with nods to Tennyson and Shakespeare -- we will examine why alliteration (and its twin devices, assonance and consonance) are more than just fun tongue-twisters. 

Week 2: Vivid versus vague! "The food was gross" is a vague sentence, while "The congealed juices of the rotten fish mixed with the limp green beans" is vivid (and yeah, gross!). We will examine how writers take their sentences from average to amazing! 

Week 3: Creating characters! Where would Queen Elizabeth I go to dinner? How about the couple in the American Gothic painting? And what would happen if... gasp... their orders came out wrong??? Using famous portraits, we will create character sketches to go beyond hair and eye color. We will imagine entire histories for our chosen characters, and then put them in a situation where they show their true colors. 

Week 4: What if? In this installment we will push imaginations over the edge... (literally -- we're going on a helicopter ride to rescue a stranded hiker... or are we hunting a Yeti? Or maybe we are secretly mining diamonds in an abandoned cave). By asking "What if?" through a series of guided situations, students will create their own story. 

Learner and instructor interaction will occur in the following manners: 1) Students are encouraged to post their writing assignments in the Classroom for both instructor feedback (through private message) and classmate feedback. 2) Each week, the instructor will post a series of questions, challenges, and writing prompts in the Classroom that learners can respond to. Examples of these are to think of all the adjectives you could use to describe a fly or to continue writing with the hook "I rounded the corner of my house and..." 

At the end of this class, students will have a portfolio of creative writing assignments as well as a new, useful skillset of writing techniques.