LB
Nov 15, 2018
Great information about plot and scene structure. The information about revision was entirely new to me - thank you! The exercises were good and difficult in a good way that helped me hone my writing.
SD
Jul 13, 2020
It seems easy at the start; give it a week or two and you will be very surprised -- with yourself and your reaction to the feedback.
The instructions are easy to follow, the insights are priceless.
By Julie S
•Jan 10, 2020
Such a delightful course. My only regret is that I wish teachers reviewed your work for the $49 monthly subscription. At least one teacher reviewing the work would make this a top notch effort to educate those that cannot afford the ever rising costs of top notch (or even mediocre) post-high school education.
By Nicole B
•Jan 30, 2017
The device of giving feedback has to simplistic, given the scope of the audience, but it's difficult to get any real value from it as far as future revisions. There should be a free write section that's required for someone to respond to the story organically as well as the specific, "Did the writer do this?"
By Arvind N V
•May 23, 2016
I learnt invaluable things in this course. I never knew of the Freytag's pyramid or the 21 point act structure etc and little by little, after doing the exercises, I feel I have learnt to edit my manuscript well enough. That has been my achievement as a learner of this course. Thanks a lot for the course. :)
By Acacia C
•Apr 6, 2022
I enjoyed the course, it had valuable content and a good amount of assignments to put what I learned to use. I do think a little feedback from the professor on maybe the last assignment would be beneficial. Sometimes peer reviews are the bare minimum feedback (ex. yes or no answers to the feedback prompts).
By Sijmen V
•Jan 14, 2021
The background and theoretical information was really usefull. Also the interviews with the writing professors offered a lot. The assignments however lacked true depth. Peer reviewing the work of others proved to be hard. 50% of the works I reviewed were unreadable because of the level of english presented.
By Samala K
•Sep 30, 2017
As the first class that I've done on Coursera, I really enjoyed the online videos and assignments. The only issue is that I would've like to have had a real professor read my work. Though I see the value (and logistical ease) of peer reviewers I didn't get credit sometimes and I didn't think it was fair.
By Pam N
•Jun 8, 2017
The course has very focused elements of structure and helps the student to learn how to use different elements to understand and evaluate her own story structure. For me, this made it much easier to understand some reasons why a story might not work or how it could be edited to good effect. I enjoyed it.
By Silvana L K
•Oct 1, 2022
I enjoyed doing this course, the content was really useful but I wish we had more examples in each of the modules.
I would also like to ask to the course instructors the possibility to add tags for the sensitive content so we can know and decide in advance whether to read it or not.
Thanks for the course
By Sanika
•Apr 29, 2019
A great well detailed course with interesting assignments. It really got me writing, gave me constructive feedback and confidence in my writing style. The technicalities involved in creative writing were nicely explained in a fun way. Heartfelt thanks to the instructor and all the guest authors.
By Ajay C
•Nov 13, 2017
The course was great, learned a lot and enjoyed the assignments.
From the reviews it seemed that some of my peers understood certain terms differently. I am pretty certain the way I understood things were correct and also think my peers feel the same way. That's the only drawback I experienced.
By ANGEL Y S V
•Jul 28, 2020
Sé que no deberÃa ser asà y las personas que tomamos este curso ya estamos grandes, pero muchos no hacen las correcciones y observaciones pertinentes: simplemente dicen cosas como "SÃ", "Bien", "¿Por qué no?" y nos dejan sin una retroalimentación correcta. Dejando eso de lado, excelente curso.
By LaShaunda C
•May 13, 2019
It filled in a few of the blanks that I felt I was missing. I was able to collect resourceful notes to help throughout writing my first epic urban fantasy fiction novel book series and I recommend this course to anyone that wants to learn just a bit more about Plotting in Creative Writing.
By Amanda L P
•Aug 26, 2020
I learned quite a bit, as this is my first creative writing course. I was able to get some hands on practice and peer feedback...4 only though because i found some of the peer reviews to be lacking (one word, no feedback) the course should have some sort of panel to rate these as well
By Catherine S
•Aug 24, 2023
Sad to see that the peer reviews aren't always well done. People don't read, write any comment, and it makes me feel like this program isn't very serious. I'm giving it another chance, but I don't think I'll continue (A private creative class seems more useful for my wants and needs)
By Aly A
•Oct 22, 2022
A enjoyable course with easy to follow videos and the interviewers were knowledgable to learn from.
One critique would be the reviews by others. Some simply acknowledged reading the story without providing any feedback, which is unfortuante. Can there not be any vetting process?
By Shreshta B S
•Jun 21, 2020
It's good, one understands how should a story start and progress to make a reader indulge and enjoy the reading. The structures and advices drastically improves one's writing abilities, in fact your change in the way you write can be noticed between your first and last assignment.
By Miguel B
•Jul 6, 2017
Excellent content and course design. Mr Skyhorse material and his personal touch make it informative and throughly enjoying to have this very first incursion in the writing world.
The several technical issues with the app subtract a star from the otherwise excellent course
By Anna B E
•Oct 11, 2020
I found the course interesting. Half of the work is reviewing other students writings but not everyone is taking this part seriously. I only had 1 review done correctly, the other 11 where useless with short answers to the questions as "yes", "no", ".", "good", "like".
By Anwesha N
•Aug 5, 2020
The course instruction was superb. Assignments really helped us push our limits. The only complain I have is the discussion forum. It hardly offered any good discussion. All were about assignment reviews. The Week 4 assignment reviews+submissions were the best ones.
By Abhishek T
•Jul 17, 2018
Gives an idea of structure.
Assignments provide challenging and restrictive setups that compel creative forces to find their rhythm in all scenarios.
Feedback is really morale boosting as well as useful critique, some angles come up that the author never looked into.
By Michelle Y
•Dec 21, 2020
An easy-to-follow course that is great for anyone, whether you're a beginner or experienced and in need for revisiting the fundamentals of creative writing. I especially enjoyed listening to the interviews of other authors and hearing their advice for this craft.
By April W
•Jan 12, 2022
The course was very helpful.
One HUGE problem: I was given a certificate without having an opportunity to review notes from my final submission where we asked for specific feedback. If that is Coursera's policy for how things work, I find it very troubling.
By Sophie S
•Aug 18, 2018
I really liked the writing exercises...they were a good challenge and the peer review was a great feature....I didn't find the videos extremely helpful though. There were a couple good ideas in them, but overall not too interesting for an experienced writer.
By Michael H
•May 24, 2016
A good introductory course to the craft of plot. Covers the basics, though I would appreciate some more complex assignments. Perhaps offer some more advanced course in the future? Maybe an advanced fiction specialization? Either way, good introductory course.
By Faith
•Nov 10, 2017
I really enjoyed this course. It re-freshed a lot of my knowledge on the writing process/vocabulary while challenging me to write in a new way. Sharing my writing with peers and learning to give thoughtful, helpful feedback was also a great learning tool!