Chevron Left
Back to Creative Writing: The Craft of Character

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

4.5
stars
1,864 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.

Filter by:

451 - 475 of 551 Reviews for Creative Writing: The Craft of Character

By lisa r

•

Jun 17, 2016

This course was very interesting and the assignments were good. I thought it relied too much on conversations with other authors but overall it was enjoyable and I learned new skills.

By S. J W

•

Mar 20, 2016

I do not understand why these courses over lap. I finished #2 today, tried to start #3 but found that I had 10 hours to complete the first weeks assignment? Who is in charge out there?

By Mohammad S

•

Jun 25, 2017

The assignments tend to be very confusing, I understand that they make sense for making characters, the difficulty might just be with the characters, but they are quite confusing.

By Tomilyn R

•

Sep 30, 2018

Coursera technology should improve since many people don't take the critiques seriously, and there's no way to measure someone who just writes 'yes' in every box.

By Kimberly F

•

Aug 22, 2019

I liked this class, but would have gotten more out of it had there been less conversation videos. I like some direct lecture to cement new knowledge.

By Kaitlyn B

•

Aug 8, 2019

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.

By Keith G

•

Oct 3, 2019

I found the content useful but was irritated by how parochial the references to other writers were. There is a big wide world outside of the USA!

By Avalon B

•

Jul 26, 2021

Good, challenging exercises. Would have liked more structure in the lectures and more specific tips that could be related to the assignments.

By Geoff N

•

Feb 27, 2017

A well thought out course that was very illuminating. Not sure about the complexity of week 2's assignment, but overall good value.

By Catalina v W

•

Oct 17, 2019

I found this course less informative than the Craft of Plot. A lot of the assignments seemed to have little to do with the videos.

By Andrea G

•

Mar 23, 2016

I liked it overall, though there were some glitches and I was hoping that there'd be at least some feedback from course organizer.

By Fernanda B

•

Oct 25, 2017

I loved this course, but sometimes the assignments weren't quite clear. Apart from that, the teacher is genius and it's great.

By Iryna A

•

Aug 9, 2017

Even though I enjoyed the course, I found the description of the assignments sometimes very confusing and lacking in details.

By J-Man

•

Oct 24, 2019

A helpful overall look at character but not particularly deep, still useful even for a refresher when writing something new

By Chew W Y

•

Jun 21, 2016

The material is interesting and relevant. I found the assignments challenging and the review questions slightly lengthy.

By BAVISETTY V P

•

May 8, 2020

Very good course..i loved the way the instructor handed this course.Especially,i felt the tips she had given were Gold.

By Fernanda d C S

•

Jun 15, 2020

I would like to have notes from the teachers as well (not just from the students).Some further ideas or highlights.

By ALESS D

•

Jan 25, 2021

good exercises, opend to questions and organized but with a lack of diversity in the ways they explain concepts

By Max H

•

Jun 29, 2017

the assignment descriptions are very confusing so I'd recommend looking into the forums for help. decent videos

By Ali N

•

Sep 19, 2018

Enjoyed the lectures, but the assignments were poorly explained and definitely could have been better.

By Tanya D

•

Aug 22, 2020

This course is very informative, however, I do wish that quizzes were a part of these courses.

By Sandra D

•

Jan 28, 2019

The course could have been delivered better, but I enjoyed the challenging assignments.

By Bhakti S M

•

Jun 6, 2021

I learned a lot. It was an interesting course and gave a glimpse into whole new world.

By Esther Z

•

Jul 30, 2019

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