Onlnie Writing Seminars
4 commentsOur foundation level courses are designed to provide just that … a foundation for writing Speculative Fiction. They will provide instruction on essential, fundamental skills in an e-learning environment that you can experience at your own pace as well as interaction with others in your course to help polish your skills.
Foundations
An introduction to the writing craft of Speculative Fiction with an emphasis on Fantasy and Science-Fiction. This is a six-unit course created by Tracy and Laura Hickman and includes a one-year subscription to the seminar secure website from the start date of your seminar course. Subscription to this course includes:
- Instant access to ALL online video coursework and workbook downloads created by the instructors.
- EXCLUSIVE TO COMPLETE FOUNDATION STUDENTS: Access to the Scribe’s Forge writer forums administered PERSONALLY by Tracy and Laura Hickman. These forums provide a workshop atmosphere where your story pitch, structure and writing can be discussed with other students as well as the instructors. Here you can discuss general aspects of your writing with Tracy Hickman directly.
Complete Foundations Course: $459.00 US
Availability: Enrollment Now Open / Seminars may be joined at any time.
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All level 100 courses are are six-units long which you may take at your own pace and they include one year of access to the secure website and forums.
Individual Seminars in the Foundation Curriculum:
Week 1: The Quest for Fire — Seizing the Creative Spark
- We begin with an exploration of Speculative Fiction in its many forms. Emphasis is on techniques for how and where one can search for and discover that ‘spark’ of an idea on which a Speculative Story is founded.
Week 2: Epic Story is Structure
- We take the epic journey of Joseph Cambells monomyth as it relates to Speculative Fiction … and the structural foundations on which story is classically formed.
Week 3: Eight Archetype Characters
- This week we take a look at basic characters … the building blocks of a complete story.
Week 4: Forging the World
- You say you have a universe where your story takes place? You say it doesn’t feel quite right? Well, help is on the way! Techniques and tools designed to help you whip your strange universe into shape and get it properly supporting your story.
Week 5: How are my Englush?
- We address the the art and practice of communicating your vision to the reader — the business of writing. The basic craft disciplines of spelling, grammar are touched on as well as the fundamental issues regarding the business of publishing such as contracts, agents, publishers, accounting, marketing and the changing face of publishing in the new media age.
Week 6: Evolutionary Publishing
- We finish our foundation work in Speculative Fiction by addressing the most important part … the creative partnership between the writer and the reader and why your writing matters.
Bonus: Why We Write
- Tracy Hickman’s speech about the impact of writing on the reader.
4 Comments
I heard your lecture on the eight character story structure and realized that concept would be a great way to teach ninth graders about structure, an important part of the brand new core curriculum. But before I teach it, I need to know more than one lecture’s worth. In order to teach it I need multiple examples, I need to practice applying the structure myself and I know I’ll have tons of questions to clarify particular points of the structure. How can I do that?
The Character Structure and archetypes that you’re talking about is covered in our course in WK 3 which we now call ‘The Usual Suspects.’ In the video and workbook materials for that part of our course we discuss not only the quantified relationship between character and plot but give three examples of how characters fit these archetypes by demonstrating ‘Star Wars’, ‘The Wizard of Oz’ and ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ as examples. In addition, I have an extensive treatment given to our writers in the course of ‘The Lord of the Rings’ dissecting that epic story down into its component separate and interwoven characters based on analyzing the characters from the book. And, of course, there are the discussion forums open to everyone in the course where we can discuss the dissection of various other stories and their characters and answer your questions regarding any points of the structure. Does that help?
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