Wesleyan University

Capstone: Your Story

This course is part of Creative Writing Specialization

Salvatore Scibona

Instructor: Salvatore Scibona

15,549 already enrolled

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Gain insight into a topic and learn the fundamentals.
4.6

(427 reviews)

7 hours to complete
3 weeks at 2 hours a week
Flexible schedule
Learn at your own pace
96%
Most learners liked this course
Gain insight into a topic and learn the fundamentals.
4.6

(427 reviews)

7 hours to complete
3 weeks at 2 hours a week
Flexible schedule
Learn at your own pace
96%
Most learners liked this course

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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 7 modules in this course

This week we lay out the agenda of the Capstone—seven weeks of structured work in which you’ll proceed from your accumulated notes and exercises to a finished piece: Your Story. We discuss the upcoming sequence of critiques of your fellow students’s work and you assemble the materials for your first draft.

What's included

3 videos1 reading

Having gathered all your scraps, notes, research, exercises into one place, you now get moving on the first draft. Through interviews with Jaimy Gordon and Amy Bloom, we discuss composition strategies—the different ways different writers have approached the blank page and how they get moving toward a coherent whole.

What's included

5 videos

Compose, compose, compose. This week is devoted completely to pushing through that crucial deadline: finishing your first draft by the end of the week. As you compose, you’ll get some advice from successful Wesleyan alumni writers who have gone from where you are to published books out there in the world.

What's included

6 videos1 peer review

Now that you’ve finished your first draft, it’s time to get ready for the first big peer review. This week we’ll talk about how to give good critique, and we’ll present a sample story and sample workshop. At the end of the week, you’ll write critiques of three of your fellow students’ work while they are busy critiquing yours.

What's included

4 videos1 reading

Some of the critiques you’ve received will seem immediately right, some more challenging, some may seem averse to your goals. This week we discuss the “Dear Workshop” Letter: a way of settling your thoughts and making decisions about what to do with all that sometimes conflicting advice as you proceed toward the final draft. We also take a moment to do a shorter critique focused more closely on the word-level decisions that you and your fellow-writers have made. You’ll perform a “sanding revision” on a single page of three of your fellow writers’ stories—you’ll report to the writer all the places her language or punctuation could use clarifying, and, just as important, where they’re already working at their best.

What's included

6 videos1 reading1 peer review

If the theme of Week Three was Compose, compose, compose, this week’s theme is Revise, rewrite; revise, rewrite. We’ll discuss different ways of reading and approaching your draft to catch the action and the language and the characterization from different angles. Through a conversation with Brando Skyhorse, we’ll also take a moment to discuss what to do after the class if you hope some day soon to publish your work.

What's included

5 videos

By the end of this week, you will finish the final version of your story. We’ll discuss ways of continuing the creative momentum that’s brought you this far—whether through writers’ groups or conferences, or just through a daily writing practice. Once you turn in the final version of your piece, you’ll perform final critiques of the stories of three of your fellow writers and will likewise receive their evaluations of your work. Congratulations: you will have completed the Specialization.

What's included

4 videos1 reading1 peer review

Instructor

Instructor ratings
4.8 (99 ratings)
Salvatore Scibona
Wesleyan University
4 Courses70,721 learners

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