Creative Writing

This course invites students to unleash their imagination and discover their unique voice as storytellers, poets, and writers. Through a blend of writing exercises, workshops, and peer feedback, students will explore various genres, including short stories, poetry, and creative nonfiction. Students will delve into the elements of craft, such as character development, plot structure, dialogue, imagery, and voice, while studying works by diverse authors for inspiration. Regular writing prompts will spark creativity, while targeted mini-lessons will hone technical skills and deepen an understanding of narrative techniques.

To successfully complete this course, students will need access to a laptop or desktop computer with a reliable internet connection and a working webcam and microphone. This course may also require purchase of texts or other course materials.

This Fixed-Paced course incorporates a blend of synchronous and asynchronous elements. Students and teacher meet live via zoom on a regular weekly schedule. In addition, students complete coursework including guided readings, interactive videos, text and video-based discussion threads, problem sets, individual and collaborative projects, and so on. While these activities are time-flexible, teachers sequence them with weekly deadlines to help students keep on track and encourage and support the development of productive time management skills.

During the course orientation period, CLI asks students to complete a survey on their availability for live class meetings. Teachers set individual class meeting times based on student responses.