Browse All Live Event Calendar Course Calendar Is WDU For You? Success Stories FAQ

Read Like a Writer:
Learn from the Masters

MARK SPENCER

Read Like a Writer:
Learn from the Masters

MARK SPENCER

$299.99

10/31/2024 - 12/12/2024

Enroll Now

This course will demonstrate that the best way to become a good writer is to study the writing of others, especially the work of the masters.

Because there are no hard-and-fast rules to writing, it’s important to study what other writers have done and how they consciously make narrative decisions and meticulously select details based on audience and purpose.

Clearly, before you can become a good writer, you must read like a writer. In other words, you must become a superb reader who discerns the nuances of narrative techniques and language.

Regardless of your genre (mystery, romance, horror, science fiction, fantasy, mainstream, or literary), you will hone your writing skills as a result of this class’ examination of the ways masters of the art and craft created intellectually and emotionally rich and compelling stories that became classics.

$299.99

10/31/2024 - 12/12/2024

Enroll Now

This course will demonstrate that the best way to become a good writer is to study the writing of others, especially the work of the masters.

Because there are no hard-and-fast rules to writing, it’s important to study what other writers have done and how they consciously make narrative decisions and meticulously select details based on audience and purpose.

Clearly, before you can become a good writer, you must read like a writer. In other words, you must become a superb reader who discerns the nuances of narrative techniques and language.

Regardless of your genre (mystery, romance, horror, science fiction, fantasy, mainstream, or literary), you will hone your writing skills as a result of this class’ examination of the ways masters of the art and craft created intellectually and emotionally rich and compelling stories that became classics.

Course outline

Course outline

Each session includes required reading, written and video lectures, creative exercises to further your learning, and a writing assignment to turn in for personalized feedback from your instructor.

Meet the instructor

Mark Spencer

Mark Spencer is the author of the novels An Untimely Frost, Ghost Walking, The Masked Demon, The Weary Motel (Omaha Prize for the Novel, Faulkner Award for the Novel), and Love and Reruns in Adams County; the best-selling nonfiction novel A Haunted Love Story: the Ghosts of the Allen House; as well as the short-story collections Wedlock, Spying on Lovers (Bradshaw Book Award), and Trespassers.

His short stories and articles have appeared in a wide variety of national and international magazines. He has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize eight times and has received four Special Mentions in Pushcart Prize: Best of the Small Presses. He also won the St. Andrews Press Short Fiction Prize. Trespassers, Mark’s most recent short-story collection, was a finalist in four national book competitions: the Serena McDonald Kennedy Award, the G.S. Sharat Chandra Prize for Short Fiction, the A.E. Coppard Long Fiction Prize, and the Quarterly West Novella Competition.

After earning his B.A. in English Literature at the University of Cincinnati, Mark earned his M.F.A. in Creative Writing at Bowling Green State University and did Ph.D. work at Oklahoma State University.

Mark is a professor of English and Creative Writing in the MFA program and Associate Vice Chancellor in Academic Affairs at the University of Arkansas at Monticello. Several times, Mark has been named to Who’s Who Among America’s Teachers.

View Website