Good course but let down by a lack of required readings and the awful peer review system. Amy Bloom is also often seemingly intentionally ambiguous in her assignment specifications which is extremely frustrating. Nonetheless, there's a lot of valuable information here.

I found the lectures were not providing enough details and practical informations on how to build a credible character. There should be more references to famous novels.

I liked the content, but found the exercises were too complex for a learner.

I am honestly not a fan of Amy's teaching style. She seems to have a discussion with herself about character building techniques but not really explain the technique nor structure it for the student.

There are too many shop talks.

I would rather have a structure explained to me and then hear a discussion... the way Brando Skyhorse does in the Plot course... really a let down. I will have to buy the book she keeps averting I guess... after spending quite good money on the course already. Pity

I didn't find this module very helpful and some of the assignments were truly confusing. I wish there was more "meat" in the sessions and more availability to access the lecturers more readily when there was confusion. I don't like the fact I pay money for other people to "assess" my work when half of them don't even read my submissions properly. Or the question. Or both. So if the lectures don't stretch me, I find my money spent unwisely.

Instructions were very unclear compared to the rest of the courses in the specialization.

I find that most of the time I don't know what is expected of me in the assignments

This course was poorly organized. The instructor was unable to stay on-topic in the videos, and the video and assignment titles had nothing to do with their content. This was more a smattering of opinions about various aspects of writing than a focused guide to crafting characters. The other courses in the Creative Writing Specialization are much more organized and helpful.

The peer reviewed assignments are next to useless, as there is no oversight on them. I think there needs to be a basic comprehension assessment done first, before allowing fellow learners the ability to pass/fail students in the course.

I did not enjoy the lecturer (Amy Bloom) at all. I felt her videos and lectures were not very beneficial, and her teaching style was lacking. The assignments were okay, but overall I do not feel like I learned much from thsi course.

I wouldn't recommend this course to anyone who's paying. The assignments instructions are too vague to understand and there's no example given.

I loved this course! Extremely useful and hands on. The course instructor was really impressive, both informative and empathetic, both arty and to the point. Totally admired her style of instruction.

The course was very well-structured and challenging. The instructor is very experienced and good, thus used relevant materials for this course, be it the guests, or the assignments, or the examples.

I really liked this course because it taught me a lot about developing my characters which was something I sorely needed guidance in. Thank you!

I did have one concern though: for Week 2's assignment "Observation and Implication", the instructions were a bit unclear. I feel the wording is a little bit awkward.

Other than that, I am thoroughly enjoying this specialization!

Wonderful course, I've loved all of what I've been able to learn through Coursera. I will say, specifically this instructor, had me quite bored and distracted trying to listen to her. She rambles on for so long without saying much. Very intelligent person, but very droll and uninteresting. I don't need 40 examples for each statement she makes.

This course covers every aspect of building a character for a beginner to understand how this world works. I would have loved a bit of more readings with examples of what was being taught to us. But overall, really good course.

My only complaint is that some reviewers (peers) really don't elaborate or give much feedback. One of my reviewers for my last assignment, left nothing at all except his name. To me, that is cheating.

Overall, I did like the course, but some of the assignment's descriptions could have been improved.

I enjoyed the lectures and the interviews with authors and found both helpful. Top marks for the quality of those elements. I discovered some authors whose books are now on my reading list.

I would have appreciated more structure on the fundamentals, perhaps with assigned readings and self-assessment exercises.

The feedback that I received was less valuable than in other writing courses I have taken. I, in turn, found that it was challenging to provide helpful feedback. The skill level was quite uneven, and many were so poor in the fundamentals that it was hard to know where to begin. Given that the enrollment is large, could you do a real-time writing exercise at the beginning to place learners in levels and tailor the teaching to their needs? Or, could you suggest to students that they take advantage of software like Grammarly? Is there a programme that is better suited to creative writing?

A technical point, I could not find a way to copy-paste the submissions in a way that did not leave me with tedious re-formatting- and even when it seemed correct, line breaks and indents would disappear, or get larger. I did wish I could have uploaded rather than copy-paste the assignments. Perhaps I could have and missed the instruction. The spacin gin this feedback is a good example of the problem- I have leftit uncorrected

Overall, I enjoyed the course; it got me back into writing and thinking about the craft. The instructor, Any Bloom and her interviews were the highlight. I hope my feedback will be helpful.

I have quite a bit to say about the course.

Firstly, I know that there are delicate nuances and such to writing good, memorable characters, and the instructor has explained them pretty well, but I feel that the technicalities required to actually begin writing somewhat-good characters, and even those required to finish the requisite assignments were barely touched upon. The explanations seemed vague at the very best.

Secondly, about peer review. I reviewed over 30 assignments, and it is safe to conclude that many peers didn't understand the instructions or the grading rubric. For the former, one could say that the instructions were confusing and difficult to follow through for someone just starting off with creative writing. Moreover, many peers were just not interested in giving fruitful feedback and left words like "good," "." and the like. So that didn't help much.

Apart from these two points, the course was enjoyable. Thank you for reading.

This course was overall 'nice'. Except for the peer review assignment. The instructors excelled in the teaching industry, but there were many other 'peers' that did not support or participate in any of the assignments. There were numerous amounts of plagiarizers, and some people even copied off my assignment. I mean, how not-smart is a person to copy off a person, and let the writer grade his own work? There were also unbelievable reviewers. The 'peers' wrote "NO" on each of the

the exercises were ok but the pointless videos of the lady talking with people were Absolutly useless and seemed an exercise in vanity

The course was great but the quality of the student/peer review was abysmal.

To be completely honest I don't think I gained much from this class. There was barely any applicable theory presented that I could use in my writing or assignments. The course primarily consisted of shop talks and the professor reading examples from other authors, with minimal actual teaching. Moreover, the video lectures really did not grab my attention. Compared to the first module (The Craft of Plot), from which I feel that I learned way more, this course was poorly constructed. The content barely touched on character development and offered no practical advice on creating believable characters, only repetitive insights from other authors. Additionally, the peer-review process was extremely frustrating. Many participants provided unhelpful feedback, often just random strings of characters like "acfijkfcdscj." While the course has great potential, it needs significant improvements in these areas. As it stands, it feels like a waste of money.

I didn't find this course particularly helpful or useful. I'm not sure why, there was a disconnect somewhere, I think maybe that I didn't receive the help that I feel I still need on the subject of how to create a great, memorable, believable character. Also, some of the assignments were confusing. Nothing really stands out about this course, and it was actually a bit boring and I don't feel I learned anything related to the subject. Everything about this class needs some work: the videos, the instruction/syllabus/content, and the assignments. Sorry, I didn't like it. =(