Hello. I enrolled in this course with the 7-day free trial. I found the lessons interesting and the writing exercises challenging. I did not continue, however, because I don't feel I was learning if I was learning. I liked reading others' work and being able to share an opinion about it, and I enjoyed the peer review feedback. But because there was no feedback from the instructors, I just never knew if I got the lesson right. One more thing, while the peer reviews include a section for comments directly to the writer under review, I never knew how to access them, so all the feedback I got was the short answers to the peer review questions.

I enjoyed the video ,tips and explanations by the instructor, but found that the assignments were too "cookie cutter" and didn't allow for much freedom of writing. Peer grading should NOT be the only assessment system in courses like this. For the most part, students are not getting proper feedback. Consider yourself lucky if you get decent constructive feedback from someone. It seems many enroll just for the sake of it and submit assignments that aren't even a full sentence. Some people have such poor English skills that there should be a screening test prior to enrolling any creative writing course!

The course content I felt could be a little more in-depth.

This has just the basics. Also, reference reading matter should be given to understand each of the concepts the course talks about. Of course, the discussion forum is helpful as more matter seems to be available there through links. I particularly liked the assignments and deadlines. It made me follow the requirements and submit them and learn in the process. One cannot procrastinate. The peer assessments were good as well. I'm happy with the constructive feedback I received.

I enjoyed Brando's discussions and explanations, but I felt that some of the plotting advice was too formulaic and 'set in stone'. Obviously, this is a beginner's course, but it seemed a bit misleading to suggest that the ABDCE formula is inherently the best or 'correct' way to approach plotting a story or scene, especially given the way many successful and/or well-known authors have deviated from a by-the-book approach to plotting. Still, an enjoyable and interesting introduction to some of the basics of plotting.

The prof's teaching was good, but zero chance to engage with him or a tutorial assistant. Some of the participating students' education or comprehension levels were not sufficient enough for them to be put in the position of grading other students which a course pass depends on. The format didn't allow for discussion with student graders who were really good, or whose comments were useful and that you might have wanted to actually have communication with, which would have made the course so much more enriching.

Plot is simplified - doesn't get into flashbacks or forwards, ideas to play with the plot structure to make it more interesting. Doesn't go into different genres of story either. Many people's texts I had to report becaue they hadn't done the assignment just put jumbled letters. But overall it was okay, and I learned about the 5 parts and distinct scenes. The understanding could be heped with animations or more interesting videos, just talking is kind of boring.

This is my first class. The discussion videos were very interesting. I did learn the ABCDE process and have found that very useful. Peer evaluations are very hard. I'm thinking that the purpose of the peer evaluation is to help the evaluator process the points taught in class. I do not think there is much help that comes to the writer as a result of these evaluations. I am hoping that there will be more effective feedback in future classes.

Excellent content with a very close look to structure on writing. The four modules definitely create a new perspective of how to build a story. Some exercises need more feedback, a conversation with a mentor. This cannot be completed with the current dynamics. How can I know if my concept of scene was fully understood? How can I get more information about the scenes I builded on my homework. Just a space for this will make the course perfect.

I did learn. However, some info could of been better explained. I felt like some videos didn't really further my knowledge. And the lack of communication on the discussions by the professor, was quite unbelievable. More participation by the professor would be appreciated. I do understand there's many people doing this, but if other can, why couldn't he? Maybe have an assistant?

Otherwise, like I said, I did learn a lot and I do appreciate it.

I enjoyed this course very much. There was a lot of good information that I was excited to learn. I would love more opportunity to practice the things we learned in the course. I also didn't enjoy grading and having my work graded by other students. I don't mind the pear reviews but I want to see a input from a professor as well. it would give me better encouragement on what I need to work on and what I am doing well at.

The class was okay, but I would have liked to have had a little more meat to it. The quantity of lecture material was light compared to other Coursera courses I have taken, and this topic certainly could have had more content. The lectures were decent, but not enough of it. This was actually one course where I didn't mind the peer review so much, as it was interesting to see what other classmates thought of my writing.

The only reason I’m giving this a three is the lack of community in the discussions, but other than that the course was great! Sure the assignments can get weird at times and the word count limit is just a whole other story, but the reviews I got from my peers once I finished them were really helpful! :)

Even if you want to just audit the course, go for it, If you’re lucky, some students will give some feedback for you.

Good but pretty limited content. If this was free, I’d be thrilIed, but It was pretty light. Not a great bang for the buck. And I got almost no feedback. I couldn’t find anything for the last assignment?? Also, low caliber of student. Some couldn’t write at all. I wouldn’t care but that’s where our feedback is (supposed to be) coming from. Check out how University of British Columbia does its programs. Wow!

A nice little start if you are a beginner writer but nothing special really. It's a short course and the videos you watch are sometimes useful and sometimes not very useful at all. Rating other writers work is an odd one as some people were much worse then others and those same people could have reviewed my work even though they can't write well themselves. Hopefully the other parts of this are better.

This course got better as it went on. The first week, the teacher went through the entire plot of Harry Potter which seemed like a waste of time. The point was made long before the telling of every plot point in Harry Potter was done. I thought, really, I signed up for four months of this? Then the lectures got better, learning the basis outlines and structures of plot is useful. Simple, but useful.

The problem is that the only feedback a student gets is from other students. I only received 1 feedback from the supposedly 3 each week for 4 weeks. I gave 3 stars because the videos are very good and good concepts but I paid far more money than they now charge. So I doubt I will finish the certificate because the final course relies only on student feedback which is non-existent.

A useful course for learning the basics behind plot in storytelling. There is no instructor feedback, only fellow students grade your work. This is a little disappointing because the students will not be able to give as good feedback as an instructor would, and some leave very short feedback like "Yes" or "no". I enjoyed the author interviews during the lectures.

Many of the ideas taught in course are useful to consider when writing. It was challenging to write with such a focus on action and plot. Some of the explanations seemed oversimplified (using Harry Potter in numerous examples throughout the course) and some of the assignments were odd (you have to kill-off your protagonist in 2 out of the 4 assignments).

The lectures and prompts were excellent, but I didn't find the peer reviews to provide me any insightful feedback. I got mostly brief answers, and I feel peer reviews are the most advantageous way to grow as a writer. Perhaps add a way to grade peer reviews to ensure the proper effort is given?

Also, the mobile app is buggy and really could use an update.

I learnt much but only rated 3 stars because students are unable to submit their assignments or receive peer group or mentor feedback unless a payment is made. The previous writing course I completed with Coursera did not have such restrictions - you only had to pay for the certificate if wanted. However, thank you for free access to the content

It was a fun course in many ways. The "Lectures" could hardly be called lectures really as they were so short. But, that said, they were info-packed so very useful. The size of MOOC's make them particularly fraught: so many participants come from non-English speaking backgrounds so reviewing other's works was actually very difficult at times.

I really like the course structure, lesson and assignments. However, I got many reviews of my assignments were people would just write one word or answer yes or no to fill the blank spaces so to proceed in the course. A minimum amount of word should be put as requirement for the reviews, this might help a bit to get some more serious reviews.

i would say its a good course, I found it entertaining. However, it's not something in real time. It's just a bunch of pre- recorded videos since 2016 and assessments that are graded by your peers, which is a good thing, but also not a good thing (I would not expand on that). Anyway, i enjoyed the course and I'm glad I completed it.

I thought Dr. Skyhorse's lectures were very strong and very clear. I did think he was speaking to his audience like novices, almost like children, but I actually appreciate that in this context. I really wanted to have someone take my hand like a five-year-old through the very elementary steps of conventional storytelling.

The course material and videos are very good, however I would prefer that comments about your work be emailed directly to the student so that they are more likely to read them. I found it to easy to just move on and not really look for the comments on my work.