第一章Welcome to Creative Writing

This chapter explains what creative writing is, and how it is different from other types and purposes of writing. Writing creatively is an ancient practice all over the world. It allows us to explore our individual identities and connections to society and other people. Creative writing uses self-expression and audience awareness to improve the quality of our lives and to benefit readers. Creative writing may be studied as career preparation and for personal skills and enjoyment.

●1.1The Foundation of Creative Writing: The Senses

In our class we’ll learn to become better writers by using our imaginations to write about the time and place in which we live, and by following in a tradition. Our class is a journey with imaginations as vehicles. The very meaning of creative writing is writing with an adventurous spirit to take our own journey of creativity leading to self-discovery and sharing.

●1.2Building on the Foundation: Using the Senses

Through creative writing we can improve our relationships with ourselves, nature and other people, thus enhancing our overall sense of happiness. Creative writing is getting in touch with your originality to express your ideas and feelings with honesty and elegance. In our course, you will learn how to access your creativity to write poems, stories, diaries, and plays.

●1.3Multi-genre Creative Writing Prompts, Waking Up Attention, Using the Senses, Memory

In this class, we will learn four fun activities to start our creative writing: using the senses, picking a position for close sensing, free-write and writing to music. Each of them helps us write with imagination and stimulation. So, just relax when you are writing and then expand the best part of your writing into a poem, story, essay, or script.

●1.4Connecting with Readers, Authors and Audiences

This lecture is about how to connect with others through creative writing. There are two important roles in creative writing. There’s your role to connect with yourself as the author, and there’s your role to connect with readers. One of our jobs as writers is to write from the heart in the best way possible. If we want readers to find our writing worthwhile, we need to keep three things in mind: subject, style, and presentation.

第二章Writing Poems

Chapter 2 provides students with the knowledge and practice to write many types and styles of poems. They learn what makes poetry distinctive and the common properties it shares with the other three genres of creative writing. Students learn about different forms, terminology, and techniques to write poems. They gain practice in using these tools to write several of their own poems using various styles and methods.

●2.1Shapes of Poems: Classical Forms and Free Verse

In this lecture, we’ll learn the three significant tools that make poems musical: rhyme, rhythm and alliteration. Next, we’ll focus on the way poetry looks to us and learn lines that are end-stopped and enjambed. We’ll also learn figures of speech such as hyperbole and repetition. Then we’ll look at a traditional form of poetry, that is, sonnets. Finally, we’ll learn three valuable and effective tools in poetry writing: images, metaphors, and diction.

●2.2Tools of Poems: Sound, Structure, Organization

In this lecture, we are going to talk about what a stanza is and how we can make use of it. And we will learn about onomatopoeia where we can use the sounds of language to convey our meaning which adds to the impact of our poetry. Then we are going to focus on how to write occasional poems such as ode, elegy and epithalamium for all the special events we experience in life. Finally, we are going to learn different types of rhyme and rhythm in English poetry.

●2.3Creating your Own Poems

In this lecture, we’re going to learn two conventional forms of poetry: cinquain and visual poetry. Then we’ll look at an invented form of poetry: free verse. Next we’ll learn how to control the pace or speed of poetry through two techniques: narrative pacing and what happens in our stanzas. Finally, we’ll focus on three open poetic forms—list poem, found poem and walk poem.

第三章Writing Fiction

Chapter 3 provides students with the knowledge and practice to write many types and styles of fiction. They learn what makes fiction distinctive and the common properties it shares with the other three genres of creative writing. Students learn about different forms, terminology, and techniques to write fiction. They gain practice in using these tools to write several of their own fictional stories using various styles and methods.

●3.1Shapes of Fiction: Literary Fiction, Genre Fiction

In this lecture, we’ll learn about many styles and types of fiction and ways to write fiction successfully. First, we are going to talk about what fiction is and the distinction between literary fiction and genre fiction. Then we will discuss genre fiction which can be divided into romance, fantasy, and horror. We’ll also learn how to write historical fiction and science fiction. Finally, we will learn to write a flash fiction.

●3.2Tools of Fiction: Characters, Plot, Setting, Narrator, Point of View, Dialogue

Through this lecture, we will learn to build believable, multi-dimensional characters with the skill of characterization. We’ll also learn plot which is the actions taken by characters. We’ll look at setting, that is, the time and space in which stories happen. Then we’ll talk about narrator and the narrator’s point of view when we are writing fiction. Finally, we’re going to focus on a tool in fiction writing: dialogue.

●3.3Creating your Own Fiction: Forms, Purposes, Planning

In this lecture, we are going to learn how to write flash fiction and detective fiction. Then we are going to focus on what the short story is and three ways to get started on writing the full-length short story. Next we’ll learn three important components in story writing: narrative design, beginnings, and endings. Finally, we will learn three new creative writing exercises to help stimulate new stories: a word bank, a journey motif, and a personification activity, as well as some important advice about how to revise stories.

第四章Writing Creative Nonfiction

Chapter 4 provides students with the knowledge and practice to write many types and styles of creative nonfiction. They learn what makes creative nonfiction distinctive and the common properties it shares with the other three genres of creative writing. Students learn about different forms, terminology, and techniques to write poems. They gain practice in using these tools to write several of their own creative nonfiction using various styles and methods.

●4.1Shapes of Creative Nonfiction: Subjects, Styles, Purposes

In this class we will start to learn about creative nonfiction and its genres such as memoir, autobiography, nature, travel, and food writing. We’ll see that specific details and personal stories are powerful tools that make our writing more vivid and interesting. We’ll also learn about writing the meditative essay and the lyrical essay. Finally, we’re going to explore creative nonfiction with the tools of the body, the self, and identity.

●4.2Tools of Creative Nonfiction: Documenting Life

In this lecture, we’ll learn some valuable tools in writing creative nonfiction: point of view and doing research. Then we’ll focus on four possible ways to provide narrative structure to our creative nonfiction: chronology, theme, character, and event. Next we’ll learn about the tools of choosing present tense and first person pronoun and perspective, and a new structure to use: the miniature. Finally, we’ll look at interdisciplinary creative nonfiction.

●4.3Creating your Own Creative Nonfiction

In this lecture, we are going to create our own creative nonfiction by using photos and keeping a journal. We’ll also try braiding and segmentation in our creative nonfiction. Besides, we’ll learn to describe the world by using the senses and perspective of a child or pretending to be from the planet Mars and have just landed on earth for the first time to give freshness to our writing. Finally, we will explore how technological communication influences the genre of creative nonfiction.

第五章Writing Drama

Chapter 5 provides students with the knowledge and practice to write many types and styles of dramatic writing and writing for performance. They learn what makes dramatic writing and writing for performance distinctive, and the common properties it shares with the other three genres of creative writing. Students learn about different forms, terminology, and techniques to write dramatic scripts and writing for performance. They gain practice in using these tools to write several of their own scripts and performances using various styles and methods.

●5.1The 10-Minute Play, The Basic Structure, Characters, Plot, Conflict

In today’s class, we will learn together about some ways for your creative writing to be publicly performed. We will begin with the form of the 10-minute play where you will learn and use the foundational ideas and skills that you can develop in the future into a longer dramatic form like the full-length one-act play or even the classical 3-act play. We will start with a good general structure for a 10-minute play, and learn what we should write in every page.

●5.2 Theme, Characters, Dialogue

This lecture mainly talks about three important creative writing tools—character, dialogue, and theme in your writing of skillful plays. As writers, much of your role as a student in our class is to build up a suitable arsenal of a writer’s best tools. Therefore, writers should be equipped with useful and effective techniques when they want to write plays more skillfully.

●5.3Writing a Film Script

Today it’s my pleasure to welcome Dr. Patrick Pritchett, who knows a lot about writing film scripts. He will explain the meaning of some new ideas: log line, stakes character, and triangle of conflict. We will also learn the tools like monologue, backstory, protagonist, antagonist, and character development.

●5.4Audience, Publication, Performing

This is the last lecture of creative writing. This lecture is mainly about audiences, publications and performances. Sharing creative writings completes the circle of communication that is only a semi-circle when we write solely for ourselves. Besides, advice on publications and performances is given in this lecture.