Index: Current Schedule - Comedy - Fiction - General - Literature - MFA - Nonfiction - Novel - Poetry - Screenwriting - Writing for Children
See WVU This Week for Up-To-Date Listings
Wednesday, December 14, 2011
The Writing Booster Workshops have been developed to assist writers in tapping their creativity. If you're suffering with writer's block, desiring to explore and find new topics to write about or simply looking for some writing exercises to get the creative juices flowing and stretch yourself as a writer, these workshops will provide the material.
Closing date: Saturday, December 17, 2011
Wednesday, December 14, 2011
The 3-act structure? No problem. Turning points? Piece of cake! There are plenty of people who can identify the main structural points of a screenplay, but not many can translate that into a workable story. In this class, we'll take the principles of the structure and begin to tackle the daunting task of assembling a script, concentrating in this class on the setup and first 30 pages of that screenplay. Prerequisite: Introduction to Screenwriting Required Resources (texts, etc.): The Screenwriter's Workbook by Syd Field
Closing date: Saturday, December 17, 2011
Wednesday, December 14, 2011
This course, "Writing and Marketing Magazine Articles," will walk you through the process of producing feature articles from idea to finished product. Time will be spent writing a query letter, and a finished article. When this class is completed, you should have a salable article ready for publication. Required Resources (texts, etc.): Feminine Wiles, by Donna Elizabeth Boetig
Closing date: Saturday, December 17, 2011
Wednesday, December 14, 2011
A 12-week course in three parts dealing with creative blocks (writer's block if you will) through spiritual exercises releasing our creative energy. Using the basic principles as set forth in Julia Cameron's, The Artist's Way, we will travel on a mystic journey toward creative recovery. Part of this recovery will be accomplished through our daily journal or 'Morning Pages.' We will learn to protect and nurture our inner artist and squelch our Censor or 'logic brain' who is our second, third and fourth thoughts, and ultimately detach ourselves from this Censor to arrive at the creative freedom we're looking for. This is a 12-week course of self-discovery. Required Resources (texts, etc.): The Artist's Way, by Julia Cameron,
Closing date: Saturday, December 17, 2011
Thursday, December 15, 2011
Successfully translating the minor characters of humanity into fiction is one of the hallmarks of a good writer.
Closing date: Saturday, December 17, 2011
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
Welcome to our writing community! This introductory workshop is designed to help members obtain a basic understanding of the concepts of Writers' Village University.
Closing date: Saturday, December 24, 2011
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
Learn to write comedy by reading, researching and writing. Each workshop in the the series is designed to show a different facet of comedy writing. Even if you're not funny, you'll learn to be funny! Required Resources (texts, etc.): Comedy Writing Workbook by Gene Perret
Closing date: Saturday, December 24, 2011
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
Worlds of Wonder will introduce the building blocks of character, world building, plotting and style as used in Science Fiction and Fantasy. Upon completion of the class, students will have produced either a short story or the first chapter of a novel. Required Resources (texts, etc.): Worlds Of Wonder How To Write Science Fiction And Fantasy, By David Gerrold, ISBN 1-58297-007-6
Closing date: Saturday, December 24, 2011
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
The objective of the Romance course is to understand and learn how to write your own Romance novel in 12 weeks. This will be done in a step-by-step procedure. The first part of the course is to learn the history behind romance writing, fine-tune our research capabilities and learn our characters inside out. The fourth lesson will concentrate on knowing how to hook the reader. There will be a one-week break, and during this break the student will do more research, writing and studying of the genre of choice along with some scene writing. There will be online readings as well.
Closing date: Saturday, December 24, 2011
Thursday, December 22, 2011
There's a distinction that's often made in discussions of place—that is, the difference between interior and exterior setting. Interior setting has come to mean, basically, an indoor place. Most beginning writers do a pretty good job of interior setting because they understand that the objects people own comment on them, at times even define them. Even beginners understand and accept the basic principles of interior setting—that a person who owns an ice bucket and silver cocktail shaker is different from someone who owns a claw-footed tub for bathing.
Closing date: Saturday, December 24, 2011
Wednesday, December 28, 2011
Tami D. Cowden, Caro LaFever and Sue Viders offer not a reductive theory on how to create complex characters, but a broad analysis of the basic male and female archetypes populating the vast field of literature and film. Required Resources (texts, etc.): The Complete Writer's Guide to Heroes and Heroines
Closing date: Saturday, December 31, 2011
Wednesday, December 28, 2011
Writing for Magazines is designed to help members gain marketable skills writing for magazines. Required Resources (texts, etc.): Writing for Magazines: A Beginner's Guide
Closing date: Saturday, December 31, 2011
Wednesday, December 28, 2011
Writing Short Non-fiction is designed to help our members gain marketable skills writing essays, anecdotes, mini-profiles, opinion pieces, humor, reviews and brighteners.
Closing date: Saturday, December 31, 2011
Wednesday, December 28, 2011
The Poetry Triggers Workshops were developed by members of P123, the Senior Poets Workshop, to challenge and prompt poets to write, whether they are suffering from writer's block, desiring to explore and find new topics, seeking to expand their craftsmanship or simply looking for some writing exercises to get the creative juices flowing between longer courses.
Closing date: Wednesday, December 28, 2011
Thursday, December 29, 2011
We must feel sympathy for a character, and here the word "sympathy" is not merely a synonym for "like," but more in terms of "understanding." If we as writers understand our characters, even the unlikable ones, if we understand their motivations, and convey this understanding to the reader, then perhaps we will come to understand something more about the mysteries of human behavior and aspiration, not the givens we already grasp, not the people and borders we know well.
Closing date: Saturday, December 31, 2011
Wednesday, January 04, 2012
A practical approach to the process of editing and revising, starting with a discussion on why revision is necessary. Then we’ll go through revising openings, looking for the essential, revising endings, and revising for style and readability. Required Resources (texts, etc.): Textbook: Revision, by David Michael Kaplan
Closing date: Saturday, January 07, 2012
Wednesday, January 04, 2012
This two-week seminar is designed to help a student understand the creative writing process. Detailed lessons cover Provocations, Movements and Random Input as we work to define creativity.
Closing date: Saturday, January 07, 2012
Wednesday, January 04, 2012
Writing Short Non-fiction is designed to help our members gain marketable skills writing essays, anecdotes, mini-profiles, opinion pieces, humor, reviews and brighteners.
Closing date: Saturday, January 07, 2012
Wednesday, January 04, 2012
This course is designed to help you find inspiration through a variety of poetry exercises and prompts. It is for beginning and intermediate poets.
Closing date: Saturday, January 07, 2012
Thursday, January 05, 2012
Point of view is one of the most basic elements in the craft of fiction. Through this medium, storytellers see, hear, feel, smell, taste, and from particular consciousnesses as well as from specific spatial and temporal perspectives. Since most contemporary fiction involves a growth of perception among characters and readers, the selection of viewpoint is crucial. Who is telling what story? Through this point of view the narrator shapes content.
Closing date: Saturday, January 07, 2012
Wednesday, January 11, 2012
Learn to write by completing selected exercises intended to help you think in new ways. There is a choice of exercises to choose from each week - do one or do them all! Be prepared for an intense learning experience and bring along a story or two of your own. By the end of this course, you will have control over dialogue, plots and developing your writing. Required Resources (texts, etc.): What If?: Writing Exercises for Fiction Writers, by Anne Bernays and Pamela Painter, Edition: Paperback ISBN: 0062720066; Reissue edition (November 1991)
Closing date: Saturday, January 14, 2012
Wednesday, January 11, 2012
This course is intended to be a series of exercises useful in developing any kind of creative work, be it fiction, nonfiction, or poetry. It is also intended to stand alone as a course to help you derive more enjoyment from keeping a personal journal. Required Resources (texts, etc.): Leaving a Trace: On Keeping a Journal, by Alexandra Johnson
Closing date: Saturday, January 14, 2012
Wednesday, January 11, 2012
The Poetry Triggers Workshops were developed by members of P123, the Senior Poets Workshop, to challenge and prompt poets to write, whether they are suffering from writer's block, desiring to explore and find new topics, seeking to expand their craftsmanship or simply looking for some writing exercises to get the creative juices flowing between longer courses.
Closing date: Saturday, January 14, 2012
Thursday, January 12, 2012
First person seduces. It mimics the insistent voice of the self-dramatized, the cathartic unstaged soliloquy of private diaries and journals, unintended for public consumption. But if we follow it into fiction, it becomes the voice of someone less familiar, even unknown, appearing with intimate urgency.
Closing date: Saturday, January 14, 2012
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
Welcome to our writing community! This introductory workshop is designed to help members obtain a basic understanding of the concepts of Writers' Village University.
Closing date: Saturday, January 21, 2012
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
You'll look at the importance of setting as the groundwork of your story without boring your readers. You'll learn how to give vivid descriptions of the where and when. Decide whether to use real or imagined settings and the different uses of settings. Each week you will complete an exercise on that week's lesson. The fourth week, you will put it all together and post a complete setting in one or two paragraphs.
Closing date: Saturday, January 21, 2012
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
Learn how to build scenes for novels, screenplays and full-bodied short stories.
Closing date: Saturday, January 21, 2012
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
The Writing Booster Workshops have been developed to assist writers in tapping their creativity. If you're suffering with writer's block, desiring to explore and find new topics to write about or simply looking for some writing exercises to get the creative juices flowing and stretch yourself as a writer, these workshops will provide the material.
Closing date: Saturday, January 21, 2012
Thursday, January 19, 2012
We've all had it: the small flash that signals the beginning of fiction. It's an old memory, a just-seen image, an idea that pops into our heads with no known origin. In that wonderful moment—what is still only a moment, a circumstance, a single image—we're opening ourselves to the rest of the process, to making a story, whole and complete.
Closing date: Saturday, January 21, 2012
Wednesday, January 25, 2012
How can you ensure your reader will care about your characters? Are your characters three dimensional or are they flat and lifeless? Will your main character be the next Huck Finn or Sherlock Holmes, or will they be easily forgotten and discarded? Do you want your main characters to be memorable?
Closing date: Saturday, January 28, 2012
Wednesday, January 25, 2012
The writing exercises in this four-week course cover the eight-point arc, character and dialogue, point-of-view and style, and editing and shaping. Required Resources (texts, etc.): "Writing A Novel," by Nigel Watts, available at Writers' Village Bookstore or through your local bookstore.
Closing date: Saturday, January 28, 2012
Wednesday, January 25, 2012
So you write nonfiction, but want to develop your personal experiences as memoirs rather than as self-help or journalistic articles? Or you're interested in writing literary nonfiction? This course is intended for you. We will focus on taking true-life experiences and shaping them into literary memoirs. If participants are interested, we might also look at using memoir writing as a springboard to other kinds of literary nonfiction. Required Resources (texts, etc.): Your Life as Story: Discovering the 'New Autobiography' and Writing Memoir as Literature, by Tristine Rainer (available at http://amazon.com)
Closing date: Saturday, January 28, 2012
Wednesday, January 25, 2012
Writing Short Non-fiction is designed to help our members gain marketable skills writing essays, anecdotes, mini-profiles, opinion pieces, humor, reviews and brighteners.
Closing date: Saturday, January 28, 2012
Thursday, January 26, 2012
Most working writers of fiction operate less by an articulated narrative theory then by the hunch and feel of experience.
Closing date: Saturday, January 28, 2012