Chevron Left
Back to Creative Writing: The Craft of Plot

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

4.7
stars
4,725 ratings

About the Course

In this course aspiring writers will be introduced to perhaps the most elemental and often the most challenging element of story: plot. We will learn what keeps it moving, how it manipulates our feelings, expectations, and desires. We will examine the choices storytellers make to snag our imaginations, drag them into a fictional world, and keep them there. We will learn how to outline and structure a plot, discuss narrative arc, pacing and reversals and reveal the inevitable surprise: connecting the beginning, middle and end....

Top reviews

LB

Nov 15, 2018

Great information about plot and scene structure. The information about revision was entirely new to me - thank you! The exercises were good and difficult in a good way that helped me hone my writing.

SD

Jul 13, 2020

It seems easy at the start; give it a week or two and you will be very surprised -- with yourself and your reaction to the feedback.

The instructions are easy to follow, the insights are priceless.

Filter by:

1326 - 1350 of 1,595 Reviews for Creative Writing: The Craft of Plot

By Arvind N V

•

May 23, 2016

I learnt invaluable things in this course. I never knew of the Freytag's pyramid or the 21 point act structure etc and little by little, after doing the exercises, I feel I have learnt to edit my manuscript well enough. That has been my achievement as a learner of this course. Thanks a lot for the course. :)

By Acacia C

•

Apr 6, 2022

I enjoyed the course, it had valuable content and a good amount of assignments to put what I learned to use. I do think a little feedback from the professor on maybe the last assignment would be beneficial. Sometimes peer reviews are the bare minimum feedback (ex. yes or no answers to the feedback prompts).

By Sijmen V

•

Jan 14, 2021

The background and theoretical information was really usefull. Also the interviews with the writing professors offered a lot. The assignments however lacked true depth. Peer reviewing the work of others proved to be hard. 50% of the works I reviewed were unreadable because of the level of english presented.

By Samala K

•

Sep 30, 2017

As the first class that I've done on Coursera, I really enjoyed the online videos and assignments. The only issue is that I would've like to have had a real professor read my work. Though I see the value (and logistical ease) of peer reviewers I didn't get credit sometimes and I didn't think it was fair.

By Pam N

•

Jun 8, 2017

The course has very focused elements of structure and helps the student to learn how to use different elements to understand and evaluate her own story structure. For me, this made it much easier to understand some reasons why a story might not work or how it could be edited to good effect. I enjoyed it.

By Silvana L K

•

Oct 1, 2022

I enjoyed doing this course, the content was really useful but I wish we had more examples in each of the modules.

I would also like to ask to the course instructors the possibility to add tags for the sensitive content so we can know and decide in advance whether to read it or not.

Thanks for the course

By Sanika

•

Apr 29, 2019

A great well detailed course with interesting assignments. It really got me writing, gave me constructive feedback and confidence in my writing style. The technicalities involved in creative writing were nicely explained in a fun way. Heartfelt thanks to the instructor and all the guest authors.

By Ajay C

•

Nov 13, 2017

The course was great, learned a lot and enjoyed the assignments.

From the reviews it seemed that some of my peers understood certain terms differently. I am pretty certain the way I understood things were correct and also think my peers feel the same way. That's the only drawback I experienced.

By ANGEL Y S V

•

Jul 28, 2020

Sé que no debería ser así y las personas que tomamos este curso ya estamos grandes, pero muchos no hacen las correcciones y observaciones pertinentes: simplemente dicen cosas como "Sí", "Bien", "¿Por qué no?" y nos dejan sin una retroalimentación correcta. Dejando eso de lado, excelente curso.

By LaShaunda C

•

May 13, 2019

It filled in a few of the blanks that I felt I was missing. I was able to collect resourceful notes to help throughout writing my first epic urban fantasy fiction novel book series and I recommend this course to anyone that wants to learn just a bit more about Plotting in Creative Writing.

By Amanda L P

•

Aug 26, 2020

I learned quite a bit, as this is my first creative writing course. I was able to get some hands on practice and peer feedback...4 only though because i found some of the peer reviews to be lacking (one word, no feedback) the course should have some sort of panel to rate these as well

By Catherine S

•

Aug 24, 2023

Sad to see that the peer reviews aren't always well done. People don't read, write any comment, and it makes me feel like this program isn't very serious. I'm giving it another chance, but I don't think I'll continue (A private creative class seems more useful for my wants and needs)

By Aly A

•

Oct 22, 2022

A enjoyable course with easy to follow videos and the interviewers were knowledgable to learn from.

One critique would be the reviews by others. Some simply acknowledged reading the story without providing any feedback, which is unfortuante. Can there not be any vetting process?

By Shreshta B S

•

Jun 21, 2020

It's good, one understands how should a story start and progress to make a reader indulge and enjoy the reading. The structures and advices drastically improves one's writing abilities, in fact your change in the way you write can be noticed between your first and last assignment.

By Miguel B

•

Jul 6, 2017

Excellent content and course design. Mr Skyhorse material and his personal touch make it informative and throughly enjoying to have this very first incursion in the writing world.

The several technical issues with the app subtract a star from the otherwise excellent course

By Anna B E

•

Oct 11, 2020

I found the course interesting. Half of the work is reviewing other students writings but not everyone is taking this part seriously. I only had 1 review done correctly, the other 11 where useless with short answers to the questions as "yes", "no", ".", "good", "like".

By Anwesha N

•

Aug 5, 2020

The course instruction was superb. Assignments really helped us push our limits. The only complain I have is the discussion forum. It hardly offered any good discussion. All were about assignment reviews. The Week 4 assignment reviews+submissions were the best ones.

By Abhishek T

•

Jul 17, 2018

Gives an idea of structure.

Assignments provide challenging and restrictive setups that compel creative forces to find their rhythm in all scenarios.

Feedback is really morale boosting as well as useful critique, some angles come up that the author never looked into.

By Michelle Y

•

Dec 21, 2020

An easy-to-follow course that is great for anyone, whether you're a beginner or experienced and in need for revisiting the fundamentals of creative writing. I especially enjoyed listening to the interviews of other authors and hearing their advice for this craft.

By April W

•

Jan 12, 2022

The course was very helpful.

One HUGE problem: I was given a certificate without having an opportunity to review notes from my final submission where we asked for specific feedback. If that is Coursera's policy for how things work, I find it very troubling.

By Sophie S

•

Aug 18, 2018

I really liked the writing exercises...they were a good challenge and the peer review was a great feature....I didn't find the videos extremely helpful though. There were a couple good ideas in them, but overall not too interesting for an experienced writer.

By Michael H

•

May 24, 2016

A good introductory course to the craft of plot. Covers the basics, though I would appreciate some more complex assignments. Perhaps offer some more advanced course in the future? Maybe an advanced fiction specialization? Either way, good introductory course.

By Faith

•

Nov 10, 2017

I really enjoyed this course. It re-freshed a lot of my knowledge on the writing process/vocabulary while challenging me to write in a new way. Sharing my writing with peers and learning to give thoughtful, helpful feedback was also a great learning tool!

By Scott M

•

May 21, 2020

Interviews were well done. Reviewing the work of other students was marginally useful. Many students would have benefited from grammar and spelling check as mistakes in those elements were distracting. This might be that English is a second language.

By abrar a

•

Mar 11, 2018

I loved the course as it got me back to writing with agenda and a goal. the words limit was a good challenge and the time to fit in the deadline were a bit difficult as I work full time on demanding job.. but i truly enjoyed the course and the lectures