Semester Course: Writing Short Bites - A Full Writing Series (11-15)

Learning to make up stories in your head, and being able to write them down, can be challenging, and even experienced writers get writer’s block or have trouble in starting a new piece. In this class, learners are going to play with words, put ideas together in amusing ways, and bring writing into a format that is easy to access. Pieces will receive short feedback each day along the way, and by the end of the eleven-week class series, learners will have a fully formed and revised story.

From Hook to Revision: A Full Fiction Writing Course on Outschool.

Week one: Welcome to class! Let’s start breaking down whatever gets your writing stuck.

Week two: What kinds of things do we use when building our characters? What can characters be? What kind of details are important? What methods are you going to use to describe them?

Week three: Everyone knows that a setting is the time, place, and environment of where your story takes place. However, writers can’t just tell their reader they are in a different world, they have to show their reader what it looks like. This week we are going to talk about how to make our setting POP.

Week four: A plot is the pathway that your character takes from the beginning to the end of the story. There has to be bumps, and your character might take wrong turns, but like a maze there in one way in and one way out.

Week five: Let’s talk about point of view! First person, second person, third person. What’s the difference?

Week six: Action stories! Scenes and summaries – which is the right choice?

Week seven: Your characters are going to talk right? This week we will discuss methods of using dialogue, and discuss the reasons that dialogue is important.

Week eight: Story hooks! Catch your readers and keep them from getting away!

Weeks nine through eleven: We will be talking about – and doing – revision and editing of the piece we have worked on over the last eight weeks.

By the end of class all learners will have a fully-formed, fleshed out work of short fiction.