Each session includes required reading, a written lecture, and a writing assignment to turn in for personalized feedback from your instructor.
Session One: Who is the story about?
Session Two: What is the protagonist’s goal?
Session Three: What is the protagonist’s problem?
Session Four: Who is the antagonist?
Session Five: How do you create obstacles for the protagonist?
Session Six: What is the story really about?
Session Seven: How do you choose a Point of View (POV)?
Session Eight: How Do you make Dialogue Interesting and Descriptions Visual?
Session Nine: How does the story end?
Session Ten: Where should your story begin?
Session Eleven: What is the best order for writing the story?
Session Twelve: What supplies the motivation to finish writing the story?
What will you learn?
Who should attend?
Required Reading
Meet the instructor
Ran Walker
Ran Walker is the author of sixteen books, has written novellas, short stories, flash fiction, microfiction, and poetry, and his work has appeared in a variety of anthologies and journals. Prior to becoming a writer and educator, he worked in magazine publishing and practiced law in Mississippi.
He is the winner of the 2019 National Indie Author of the Year Award (selected by judges from Library Journal, Publisher's Weekly, IngramSpark, St. Martin's Press, and Writer's Digest); the 2019 Black Caucus of the American Library Association Best Fiction Ebook Award; and the 2018 Virginia Indie Author Project Award for Adult Fiction. He is also the recipient of both a 2005 Mississippi Arts Commission/NEA artist grant and a 2006 artist mini-grant. He served as an Artist-in-Residence with the Mississippi Arts Commission in 2006. Additionally, he is a past participant in the Hurston-Wright Writers Week Workshop and is the recipient of a fellowship from the Callaloo Writers Workshop.
His novel Mojo's Guitar was translated by renowned French translator Philippe Loubat-Delranc and published in April 2015 by Éditions Autrement as Il était une fois Morris Jones, and was republished in May of 2019 as a part of Éditions Autrement's "Les Grands Romans" collection. His first collection of poetry, Most of My Heroes Don't Appear On No Stamps: Kwansabas, will be published in August of 2019 by The University of Hell Press.
A graduate of Morehouse College, Pace University, and George Washington University Law School, Ran is an Assistant Professor of English and Creative Writing at Hampton University and lives in Virginia with his wife and daughter. Follow him on Twitter @ranwalker.