Your style is as unique and distinctive as your face, your voice, except that you can choose it, you can can work on it, enhance it. In this course we will introduce aspiring writers to the art of putting pressure on written language. We will study the use of metaphor and imagery, and demonstrate how clarity, grace, and inventiveness in word choice are imperative to a story’s success. Writers will emerge with the revision skills essential to all writers of good stories and good prose.
Creative Writing: The Craft of Style
Creative Writing: The Craft of Style
This course is part of Creative Writing Specialization
Instructor: Salvatore Scibona
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4.7
(1,156 reviews)
7 hours to complete
3 weeks at 2 hours a week
Flexible schedule
Learn at your own pace
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Taught in English
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This course is part of the Creative Writing Specialization
When you enroll in this course, you'll also be enrolled in this Specialization.
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There are 4 modules in this course
Here in the first module we focus on putting pressure on your words so that they mean what you intend. We balance abstraction with the need to make good sense. And we discuss the first and last stylistic difficulty of any prose writer, being clear.
What's included
9 videos2 readings1 peer review1 discussion prompt
In the second module we look at the various parts of speech and how two of them—nouns and verbs—are the building blocks of good style and good narratives. By relying on nouns, we make the people, places, and things of the narrative world vivid. By relying on verbs we keep the story alive and in motion.
What's included
6 videos1 peer review1 discussion prompt
In the third module, having practiced putting words in, we learn to take them out. And why: for humor, for clarity, for cleanliness, and for that fleet quality of wit that makes a style irresistible.
What's included
5 videos1 reading1 peer review
In the the final module of the course, we learn to balance the drive to get at ideas and feelings, with the need the story always has for concreteness, realness. We learn to express ideas in the form of physical things in a narrative world, to produce a style that speaks as much to the world of the senses as to the world of the mind.
What's included
6 videos1 peer review
Instructor
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4.9 (160 ratings)Offered by
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4.7
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5
Reviewed on Oct 24, 2016
This has been a great opportunity for me to force the work and get something done. I haven't been that happy with some of what I've written, but I like the challenge of meeting a deadline.
AM
5
Reviewed on Jul 16, 2018
Beautiful course, I've been writing for years, and this experience has been of great help and polishing. You are creating great writers. Thank you for the opportunity and all the knowledge.
SF
5
Reviewed on Sep 3, 2017
I think this has been my favourite of the courses up until now. I love the way Scibona expresses himself and involves the students with his passion for style and persuasive narrative!
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Access to lectures and assignments depends on your type of enrollment. If you take a course in audit mode, you will be able to see most course materials for free. To access graded assignments and to earn a Certificate, you will need to purchase the Certificate experience, during or after your audit. If you don't see the audit option:
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