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

Excellent class!

Liked the course. Assignments were not very clear to me.

Very helpful :)

The course is very informative and goes into great detail as to the key points of creating interesting and fleshed-out characters. I did, however, find the course topic a bit disorganized, as there would be videos or units with a name indicating a focus on a certain aspect but would then handle a completely unrelated, if still useful, topic. This was the only flaw I found in the course, and it is relatively minor, but it would be a very useful change in the future. Otherwise, it is highly recommended so long as you don't mind a bit of a messy syllabus!

A little boring at times but lots of valuable information on how to build a character.

I enjoyed the lectures, but perhaps there could be more examples in writing. Like parts of stories we could read, especially with idiosyncrasies. I felt like I needed to see those things in action, on paper.

This was a good course that helped me broaden my POV writing style, though the assignments were difficult to do, and one was difficult to understand.

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

Not by far as good as the first module (Craft of Plot). This course seemed less planned and structured. The videos were mostly interviews that sort of touched upon the subjects but hardly ever got into detail. The assignments were often vague and harder to understand.

Helpful, but not very much.

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

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

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

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

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

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

The first assignment was a lot of fun but the other three were a little confusing, as evidenced by the ever-recurring questions on the forum. The videos were usually really interesting though. Amy has a very pleasant voice but seems to rely on her notes a little too much.

The course was very interesting and shed light on the specifics on character development. However, the questions in most peer-graded assignments were some times not suitable for the assignment.

The lectures in this class are well done and informative, and they provide a lot of good material. However, the assignment portion needs a lot of work. The instructions weren't clear for anyone taking the class which resulted in incredibly difficult grading. It was hard to even understand the basic ideas of what was required for an assignment.

I think the teacher very much needs to go back and change the wording of the assignments, add more information in the instructions, and also post an example to show what is expected since a lot of the assignments are very strange, like a describing a character without mentioning the character in any way.

The course information was great and the assignments were very helpful. What lost points for the course was not the content provided by Wesleyan, which was good, but the poor effort on the part of many of the fellow students to really work on constructive critiques. For each assignment I had at least one of the three peer reviews that was useless to me to improve my writing, sometimes more. There should be a way to rate critiques so that students can't move on if they don't do the work of critiquing well.

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

I felt like the teaching was fairly abstract, and I had a difficult time figuring out how I was supposed to apply certain lessons. Overall, I did pick up several helpful hints, so the course was worth it.

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

Compared to other courses in the creative writing specialization, I felt that this one needs some improvement. The video lectures just didn't have enough meat to them. For example, in other courses in the specialization, there will be links to optional readings or videos, leading to a deeper understanding of the concepts. Some readings, for example, would be welcome to give example of great (or even not so great) characterization.

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