Each session includes required reading, a written lecture, creative exercise to further your learning, and a writing assignment to turn in for personalized feedback from your instructor.
Session One: Getting Started
Session Two: Character Building
Session Three: Characterization & Point of View
Session Four: Dialogue
Session Five: Plot
Session Six: Polishing Your Prose
What will you learn?
Who should attend?
Required Reading
Student Testimonials
Meet the instructor
G. Miki Hayden
G. Miki Hayden’s latest novel just out is a Florida thriller—Political Alliances. All the boxes are ticked—murder, desperation, an odious cult, a virtuous and savvy protagonist who knows the lay of the land from South Florida to the citrus groves and its impoverished pickers. Oh, yes, this is an election year and money counts. A bit of romance brings contention and attraction. Last spring’s new novel from Hayden was a highly praised police procedural, Dry Bones, set in an exciting and diverse Oklahoma. Also out this past year was novel three of the Rebirth trilogy Rescued,Re-Live, and Respiration, the engaging story of martial arts grandmaster Jay Gardner—all literary fiction with strong plot and character elements and powerful openings. Hayden also recently sold four novels for electronic serialization, while her first novel in print, Pacific Empire (an alternate history), won a rave in the NYTimes and was on that paper’s Summer Reading List. The sequel, New Pacific, was in print in 2004. Other novels of Hayden’s in print are By Reason of Insanity (a mystery), Question Woman & Howling Sky (a post-apocalyptic novel set in the West), Strings (a middle-grade fantasy), and The Heroine’s Journey (a YA fantasy set in the Middle Ages and our own time). Miki has had many short stories published, including in Alfred Hitchcock and Ellery Queen and in three Mystery Writers of America anthologies (winning an Edgar for one). She has further published in science fiction and romance genres. Miki has two writing instructionals in print—Writing the Mystery in its third edition and The Naked Writer, a style guide, also in its third edition. She has taught at Writer’s Digest University online for more than twenty years.
