I loved the course. It helped me complete my first novel. Id give it 5 stars except that the software was a bit glitchy at times, making it hard to upload my chapters or doing odd things with the formatting.

This course has helped me complete my novel. I am very thankful to David Wheeler for guiding me through it and each and every person that has read and gave feed back. I hope you all are successful.

The course is really nice and helpful, but there is a problem with old submissions not being deleted, so it causes trouble with the reviewing process. I hope it can get fixed.

It starts off great, but towards the end, the number of people doing the work drops off dramatically.

I have learned a lot from this course. This course has proved to be very useful for us.

Simple and easy to follow.

Worth your time.

Very helpful.

Hi, This course is great for both first time writers and those with a manuscript that is developed to a degree. First time writers who have a 9 to 5 job will feel rushed because the very short 3-week timeline. Writers with partially done manuscripts will probably benefit the most because they will be compelled to complete their drafts within a short time. Because of the aforesaid, the peer reviews lack depth and are probably of no much use. The requirement to submit six reviews is not necessary at all. Three are more than sufficient. I think Coursera or MSU should create editing/peer-review groups and not leave it to the writers. Have the writers complete a form showing their loglines and genres they are working on and create the working groups of three or four. Or, facilitate a Zoom call where the writers do the same. The 2-minute lectures are probably pep talks as opposed to lectures. Not sure why these could not be expanded to about five to ten minutes and provide for more concrete guidance on selected areas, e.g.: character development, pacing, genres, development of diction, voice etc. Finally, the elephant in the room. Plagiarism. I would give the course a 1-star on how this risk is managed. MSU/Coursera need to explore ways of formal registrations, affidavits, face-to-face Zoom calls, removal of fake accounts, repeated stern warnings etc. The consequence of writers feeling that their work was being plagiarised was that some exceptional writers stopped posting their work. I noted a few sentences here and there that felt as though it is how I write, but I was certain it was not plagiarism. I know it is a free course but I do not think what I am suggesting is massive changes. Just a tweak here and there to improve delivery. Would I take the course again? Yes, because it compelled me to finish my manuscript in double time. Would I recommend the course? Highly.

Dan Wheeler is a very good teacher. I learned a lot from this course, and hope to take more courses taught by him in the future. The only 2 issues I had with this course is that you have to share your writing with your peers in order to complete it. Although they do get you to sign an agreement stating you will not steal anyone else's work, I feel like the class leaves too much room for plagiarism to happen. The second issue is that peers are supposed to review each others work, which in essence isn't a terrible idea, but I feel like many of my classmate were also wary of sharing their work so everyone was vague and didn't follow the direction given by the teach, (which I'm not against because I didn't want to share my work either.)

This course needs to be updated. The rules were changed regarding the feedback, where students' feedback from others on their work is withheld until the student himself completes the assignment to provide 6 reviews for others. It's also frustrating to see other students not committed to the course and this may be a function of the fact that it is free. other students will not take the assignments seriously and leave garbage text just to complete the requirement.

Certainly not a course for beginners. That is, it might be your first novel, but you should already know how to structure it, what is the story arc and how to create believable characters, as none of this is even discussed (or at least not before one is expected to write chapter one of the the novel, at which stage I would expect you'd have a plan of what you're writing, not just throwing random words at the page).

I love the structure and the videos but cannot seem to get back to my submissions to edit them based on feedback. I also seem to have lost my logline even though it has been reviewed. Is there any way to scroll back to a summary of all the submissions we have made to keep track of what is needed. Also, I do not know how to join a writer's group so would like better direction in that regard.

I didn't like his BS 3 week deadline for 50K words at 500 words a day but it was fine overall

not bad

general premise is a good idea, but only having peer feedback gets really old. Conflicting opinions from people with no professional experience just becomes confusing after awhile. Who do you trust? I enjoyed the lectures though. But after about week 11 its obvious student participation is dwindling and no one wants to have to read 5 other books just to get through the course, so peer feedback becomes short and useless. I don't exactly feel like I've learned anything, but it has given me a nice structure to self regulate my writing schedule. Thats about it. Wish the professor was more involved, but I understand the course has thousands of people.

I think the first couple of weeks are great, but after that it just becomes a "write next chapter" simulator and it enforces a set amount of them, with a specific length. If you wish to write more/less chapters or with a different word count than what is enforced, this is where the craks start to show.

I'd recommend taking at least the first couple of weeks and then deciding for yourself if you can or wish to comply with the arbitrary restrictions of the following assignments.

very short video. For 26 weeks of work, all you get is only motivation, though its importance cannot be discounted.

Dont pay for this.

Nothing you can't find out about writing a novel for free elsewhere (for goodness sake, NaNoWriMo has been a thing for YEARS and has been more helpful than this; do that if you want to write. It's much easier to connect to other writer on those fourms than in this class) Got very litttle helpful feedback from peers (you get tired of seeing "Good job!" or "Interesting" over and over again. Those aren't critiques) The videos are so vauge about story structure to cover every type that they aren't helpful. There are books, podcasts, and videos on other platforms that cover much more (I'd actually suggest things that rip into what doesn't work. Learning what doesn't work can help to better stucture things in a way that actually does)

Other issues that drag the class down is there's no way to follow a story from a fellow peer unless they're in a created group OUTSIDE THE CLASS, which negates the need for it in the first place. It doesn't help that I have sites I've used before this class to get feedback. There also isn't any staff intereaction at all. Anything goes wrong there's no help. This already gives off abandoned vibes.

Also, you don't actually have to finish a novel to finish the course; just jump to the last section and answer an open-ended response question on the course itself (I'm sure it doesn't actually check anything, going by the rest of the course's content) and it's fully complete. That's the only thing that's actually graded in the WHOLE course. Again, NaNoWriMo has existed for years now and is free to do. Look that up. You can do a similar setup to that at any time during the year.

this course definitely didn't give me what I personally needed. It is ideal for someone who needs to learn the habit of writing regularly, and can benefit from having others to keep them accountable. My review is based on it not meeting my needs, however, there are many folks whose needs it will meet.

You can''t start over

BALER COURSE