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Learner Reviews & Feedback for Creative Writing: The Craft of Character by Wesleyan University

4.5
stars
1,862 ratings

About the Course

At the center of a good story are the characters in it. In this course aspiring writers will discover how to build and bring to life complex, vivid and unforgettable characters. We will study the choices a writer makes to bring all characters to life on the page, and we will perform written exercises in order to develop a variety of writing and pre-writing techniques, in order to create a variety of characters. We will learn how to use our own life experiences, and the people we know (and how not to!). We will develop inner (thoughts and feelings) and outer (appearance, habits, behavior) lives for our characters and see how that can lead us to richer and more interesting stories. We will breathe life into our characters and let them surprise us....

Top reviews

SS

Aug 10, 2016

I loved this course! Extremely useful and hands on. The course instructor was really impressive, both informative and empathetic, both arty and to the point. Totally admired her style of instruction.

NM

Sep 25, 2020

The course was very well-structured and challenging. The instructor is very experienced and good, thus used relevant materials for this course, be it the guests, or the assignments, or the examples.

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526 - 550 of 551 Reviews for Creative Writing: The Craft of Character

By Celeste e

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Sep 19, 2021

I enjoyed everything that I learned from the course. My only wish is that the course included teacher reviews in addition to the peer reviews.

By Emilio M L

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Dec 2, 2020

I honestly didn't learn a lot more than in the first course of the specialization. Some of the assignments were a little off-putting to me.

By Rebecca B

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Nov 23, 2022

the exercises were ok but the pointless videos of the lady talking with people were Absolutly useless and seemed an exercise in vanity

By Martha M

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Mar 1, 2021

Most of the assignments had nothing to do with the lectures. The assignments instructions weren't clear sometimes and very confusing.

By Sara A

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Mar 18, 2018

The assignments are hard to understand and not well explained. They are also completely irrelevant to the lessons of the week.

By Davide P

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Sep 26, 2019

Has been a great course but I would have loved more readings and a little bit more formal rules to sketch our own characters.

By Laura B

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Dec 8, 2018

Good information in the videos. The assignments were difficult and didn't seem related to the material from the lectures.

By stanislava o

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Sep 23, 2018

I liked a lot of what was said. I wish I had some more concrete advice for building character - if such a thing exists.

By Deleted A

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Nov 16, 2017

Great material but students grading other student's work becomes a problem if they can prohibit another from passing.

By Valarie K

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May 12, 2016

Good course, but assignment instructions were difficult to understand at times and no examples were given.

By Sanelisiwe M

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Nov 1, 2016

This course is beneficial to all those who struggle with character plot. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

By Stephanie E

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May 18, 2017

In the second course, the talks were not as useful for the assignments, particularly in week 2.

By hector c

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Mar 6, 2018

It is good but I think the lectures are a little disjointed from each other and the exercises.

By Digby D

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Dec 3, 2017

Adequate intro course. Could gather roughly the same info with a bit of browsing the internet.

By Paulene A

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May 29, 2017

This course could use some work, but nevertheless I learned a bit more than I already knew.

By Abhiraj S D

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Jul 21, 2018

the assignments were poorly worded which is the opposite of the purpose of assignment

By Jorge T

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Aug 8, 2016

The excercises on the course are great, but the videos can be a little vague.

By Walter M

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May 16, 2022

It was good, reviwing other students writing can be fun or very irritating.

By Jill B

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Sep 9, 2016

Excellent lectures. Assignments were a little too "exercisey" for me.

By Jeff

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Jan 13, 2019

Content is great, but the app is very buggy and difficult to use.

By Houda A I

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Aug 24, 2018

There parts that were rather confusing in Week 2 (assignment)

By Vishal B

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Jun 11, 2020

Instructor is not very good

By Camille B

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Mar 28, 2019

Helpful, but not very much.

By kathleen g

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Jan 16, 2024

The instructors are fine......the review process is not. There is no input from an instructor and the reviews by persons in the course are very spotty: one or two are by people who know what they are doing, but a good number are not. In my last assignment, my review was total jibberish and I had spent many hours on the assignment.

By Calin-Stefan P

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Mar 26, 2024

The peer review is terrible. Many trolls and disinterested people. They didn`t engage, didn`t provide feedback and didn`t even make the slightest value judgment in peer-review.