Instructor:
Videos Outline:
1. Meet your new instructor:
Man Booker Prize-winning author Margaret Atwood. In your first lesson, Margaret shares her perspective on the art of writing and who ultimately gives your book its meaning.
2. Getting Started as a Writer:
Margaret encourages you to find your own path, overcome obstacles like fear, and start writing by sharing her own writer’s story and creative process.
3. Story and Plot:
Learn what makes a strong plot. Margaret advises you to study myths, fairy tales, and other historical works of literature so that you can use them as building blocks for your stories.
4. Structuring Your Novel: Layered Narratives and Other Variations:
Margaret illustrates the myriad ways you can structure your story and create a multi-layered narrative, using the classic tales Little Red Riding Hood, Arabian Nights, and her own novel The Blind Assassin as examples.
5. Who Tells the Story: Narrative Point of View
Choosing the right point of view to tell your story from involves a lot of trial and error. Margaret explains the impact this decision has on your story, and offers an exercise to help you explore the effects of various points of view.
6. Point of View Case Studies:
In this chapter, Margaret discusses her use of multiple points of view in Alias Grace, and why she wrote The Handmaid’s Tale from the first person point of view.
7. Bringing Characters to Life Through Detail:
Actions and reactions reveal character, but so do details the writer thoughtfully weaves into the story. Margaret offers concrete tools to help you create nuanced, well-developed characters you know by heart.
8. Creating Compelling Characters:
Margaret teaches why the most compelling characters are often not very likeable, and delves into how gender plays into our expectations about character.
9. Writing Through Roadblocks:
Learn Margaret’s advice for overcoming challenges such as constant interruption, writer’s block, or a narrative problem you can’t figure out how to solve.
10. Crafting Dialogue:
Margaret teaches how to use dialogue to reveal character and story, and discusses the importance of making your dialogue authentic to the time and place in which your narrative transpires.
11. Revealing the World Through Sensory Imagery:
The more specific your details, the more engaged your readers. Learn how Margaret uses The Handmaid’s Tale to illustrate her approach to imagery.
12. Prose Style and Texture:
Learn the difference between style and description as Margaret illustrates two different prose style extremes—baroque and plainsong.
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