Tuesday, February 28, 2012

On-line Classes

I'm finishing up an on-line writing class right now. For the month of February I tried to learn how to make my novel sellable. (Yes, I'm purposefully being vague so you can't figure out what course it is.) To be honest, I don't think I learned much. This is primarily my own fault because I didn't do the homework and read all the class materials.

I started out reading all the class materials but it was pretty specific to another genre and I got less interested. The primary thing I noticed about the handouts was the teacher advocated a lot of telling. In examples, the teacher would tell the reader the character's goals, motivations, and conflicts on every page. Apparently, some genres are in favor of a lot of telling, but this goes against my writing paradigm.
During the month I tried to implement the class ideas (in a non-telling way) when I wrote first drafts of my new pages. This made homework difficult because we were supposed to post a "before" and an "after" writing sample where we improved our writing based on the class ideas. My first drafts were as "after" as I knew how to make them.
I guess the gist here is, I'm a bad student. :)

This wasn't the first time I've signed up for an on-line writing class. I get excited about the topic prior to the class and plunk down my money but they are rarely as exciting and informative as I think they'll be. Oh well. At least it gets me thinking about various aspects of writing and interacting with other writers. That's always fun.

How about you? Have you ever taken a good on-line writing class? If so, tell us!

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