The five-week course was How Writers Write Fiction 2016: Storied Women.
A video, reading and writing assignments, and optional readings were provided with each assignment. I worked at my own pace. Here is a peek into what I learned:
Assignment #1:
Voice and Identity: I wrote a new piece based on a childhood about finding out my family would be moving from Vine Street in Webb City, MO. This was the most difficult piece. Until this piece, I hadn’t written from a child’s point of view.
Assignment #2:
Desire and Point of View: I took an old, unpublished short story and revised it. I concentrated on the main character’s big and little Ds, his desires and how that influenced the conflict.
Assignment #3:
Immersion: I concentrated on world building. I took a half-done historical manuscript, “Boston Mountains” with a twist and honed the sensory elements in a couple of scenes where some characters were above ground in the 1800s, but the main character was below, lost in a cave subculture.
Assignment #4:
Cast and Plot: I took a fairly new scene I wrote for my current in-progress manuscript, “Another Kind of Hero” and revised an interrogation scene by changing the characters to an all female cast.
Assignment #5:
Narrative Experimentation:
I chose “Boston Mountains” again to play around with sequence and fragmentation. I don’t like reading fiction that uses this technique, but it was fun to play with the form, especially because there were already some futuristic components in some of the scenes.
I recommend the course. It is free and will be offered again soon.
Best,
Lynn Hesse