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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Helpful, but not very much.

this was my least favorite of the classes - the lectures ere not informative, and far too lofty. The style class, the plot class and the setting class all had detailed, concrete teachings, whereas these lectures were too airy. Most of them consisted of authors chatting with each other. The assignments required real craft however, and it would have been helpful to LEARN those skills in the modules.

For example, one assignment asked us to describe a character in a setting, while they were not actually there - say a divorced nurse in a hospital. Not once in the lectures were we ever taught HOW to do this. We watched a series of author fireside chats, and then people bumbled through the assignment. I really wanted Amy Bloom to just walk over to the board and draw a character and say "this is a woman, she's divorced, she's middle class, she tends to get very angry when things don't go her way" or whatever,and then draw out a list of how her internal states might manifest in the world around her - she throws things, she's disorganized, she writes mean notes in the patient charts.

I wanted her to teach. She seems to think we already know how to do things like imply a characters state of mind through action. I mean, for a beginning writer, its helpful to just make a list of details about a character - where they're from, what they like or don't like, what sort of flaws they might have and so on. We did barely any of this. It was assumed we knew the basics of characterization, but most students did not!

some of the other students frustration and confusion came out in the peer review, which was a bad sign.

I didn't find this course particularly helpful or useful. I'm not sure why, there was a disconnect somewhere, I think maybe that I didn't receive the help that I feel I still need on the subject of how to create a great, memorable, believable character. Also, some of the assignments were confusing. Nothing really stands out about this course, and it was actually a bit boring and I don't feel I learned anything related to the subject. Everything about this class needs some work: the videos, the instruction/syllabus/content, and the assignments. Sorry, I didn't like it. =(

I am honestly not a fan of Amy's teaching style. She seems to have a discussion with herself about character building techniques but not really explain the technique nor structure it for the student.

There are too many shop talks.

I would rather have a structure explained to me and then hear a discussion... the way Brando Skyhorse does in the Plot course... really a let down. I will have to buy the book she keeps averting I guess... after spending quite good money on the course already. Pity

I prefered the Craft of Plot course to this one, and I almost felt like I learned more about creating characters in that one than I did here. I didn't feel like there was a lot of structure to this course, and the majority of the videos are shop talks about things that are somewhat unrelated to the topic of the module. The instructions for the assignments were somewhat difficult to understand too, however I did feel like some learning was acquired by doing them.

I didn't find this module very helpful and some of the assignments were truly confusing. I wish there was more "meat" in the sessions and more availability to access the lecturers more readily when there was confusion. I don't like the fact I pay money for other people to "assess" my work when half of them don't even read my submissions properly. Or the question. Or both. So if the lectures don't stretch me, I find my money spent unwisely.

I found the assignments very challenging to understand as there was very little clarity in the way they were written. Had to constantly reach out to mentors and forum discussions to actually understand what the instructor wanted.

Overall, I did not enjoy this course as much as I enjoyed the other three courses of this series.

The instructor did very little teaching and spent much more time interviewing other instructors from different courses. The instruction regarding character development was not very useful compared to the insight provided in the Craft of Plot course. I do not feel I got very much out of this course.

Amy Blooms assignments were so complicated and obtuse that they were hard to dive into. The lectures didn't particularly hold me , either. Often, what the lecture was titled and what was taught seemed totally unrelated. Could be improved but at least it kept me writing.

This is by far the weakest course of the creative writing specialization. The majority of it is spent with the "teacher" having shop talk sessions with other novelists, but doing very little teaching herself.

This was my least favourite course in the the Creative Writing Specialisation. I learnt a bit about creating characters but I found the lessons bland and the assignments difficult to understand.

Was really looking forward to this section but felt it was lacking in content.

Too many interviews which were full of quotations and praise for other authors and was left feeling disappointed.