Creative Writing: Unleashing the Core of Your Imagination

About This Course

For many hundreds of years, literature has been one of the most important human art forms. It allows us to give voice to our emotions, create imaginary worlds, express ideas, and escape the confines of material reality. Through creative writing, we can come to understand ourselves and our world a little bit better. This course provides students with a solid grounding in the writing process, from finding inspiration to building a basic story to using complicated literary techniques and creating strange hybrid forms of poetic prose and prose poetry. By the end of this course, students will learn how to discover their creative thoughts and turn those ideas into fully realized pieces of creative writing. Prerequisites:  None

Course Objectives: Upon completion of this course, students will be able to...

• Analyze how an author’s craft can create such effects as mystery, tension, or surprise
• Analyze how an author uses source material in a specific work to illuminate a theme
• Distinguish between genres of creative writing
• Understand the history and origins of creative writing
• Understand how language functions in different contexts and how to make effective word choices
• Recognize the importance of an author’s voice and how it affects tone and style
• Engage in the act of free writing and journaling for inspiration
• Identify ideas from various sources
• Analyze how language contributes to characterization
• Evaluate a speaker’s point of view, reasoning, and use of language
• Describe how a theme or central idea runs through a text and develops over time
• Understand the characteristics of fiction and its literary elements
• Determine the strategies necessary when crafting effective characters
• Analyze how a writer unfolds a series of ideas, events, or descriptions to enhance setting
• Determine the meaning of words and phrases in stories, including the use of figurative language
• Examine how a writer’s creative choices affect the tone and mood of the story
• Understand the importance of a fictional setting and how it influences other literary elements
• Analyze how characters develop over the course of a story
• Understand the purpose and approach to writing effective dialogue
• Utilize the strategies of writing a sketch story
• Examine how dialogue is an integral part of both fiction and screenwriting
• Determine how an author uses point of view to attain certain goals
• Recognize and understand the various areas of creative nonfiction
• Analyze how certain details within the text shape and refine the overall message
• Identify how to treat facts and truths when creating a narrative
• Analyze and define the way a subject can vary depending on how it is told
• Determine how and where details are emphasized in various accounts
• Identify how poetry can access significant ideas through imagery and other literary devices
• Understand the key strategies of poetic structure
• Explain the difference between a revision and a critique
• List several approaches to revision that allow you to see your first draft with more objectivity
• Explain what professional expectations there are for the different types of writing-related careers
• Demonstrate the purpose and process of drafting and editing

Course Outline:

Unit 1: The Path to Creative Writing

Unit 2: Finding Your Creative Light

Unit 3: Fiction First

Unit 4: A Fictional Place

Unit 5: Speech in Writing

Unit 6: When Truth Meets Imagination

Unit 7: Finding Your Inner Poet

Unit 8: Revision and Purpose

Resources Included: Online lesson instruction and activities, opportunities to engage with a certified, online instructor and classmates, when appropriate, and online assessments to measure student performance of course objectives and readiness for subsequent academic pursuits.

Additional Costs: None

Scoring System: Michigan Virtual does not assign letter grades, grant credit for courses, nor issue diplomas. A final score out of total points earned will be submitted to your school mentor for conversion to their own letter grading system.

Time Commitment: Semester sessions are 18-weeks long: Students must be able to spend 1 or more hours per day in the course to be successful. Summer sessions are 10 weeks long: Students must be able to spend a minimum of 2 or more hours per day, or about 90 hours during the summer, for the student to be successful in any course. Trimester sessions are 12-weeks long: Students must be able to spend 1.5 or more hours per day in the course to be successful.

Technology Requirements: Students will require a computer device with headphones, a microphone, webcam, up-to-date Chrome Web Browser, and access to YouTube.

Please review the Michigan Virtual Technology Requirements: https://michiganvirtual.org/about/support/knowledge-base/technical-requirements/

Instructor Support System: For technical issues within your course, contact the Customer Care Center by email at CustomerCare@michiganvirtual.org or by phone at (888) 889-2840.

Instructor Contact Expectations: Students can use email or the private message system within the Student Learning Portal to access highly qualified teachers when they need instructor assistance. Students will also receive feedback on their work inside the learning management system. The Instructor Info area of their course may describe additional communication options.

Academic Support Available: In addition to access to a highly qualified, Michigan certified teacher, students have access to academic videos and outside resources verified by Michigan Virtual. For technical issues within the course, students can contact the Michigan Virtual Customer Care by email at customercare@michiganvirtual.org or by phone at (888) 889-2840.

Required Assessment: Online assessments consist of formative and summative assessments represented by computer-graded multiple choice, instructor-graded writing assignments including hands-on projects, model building and other forms of authentic assessments.

Technical Skills Needed: Basic technology skills necessary to locate and share information and files as well as interact with others in a Learning Management System (LMS), include the ability to:

• Download, edit, save, convert, and upload files
• Download and install software
• Use a messaging service similar to email
• Communicate with others in online discussion or message boards, following basic rules of netiquette
• Open attachments shared in messages
• Create, save, and submit files in commonly used word processing program formats and as a PDF
• Edit file share settings in cloud-based applications, such as Google Docs, Sheets, or Slides
• Save a file as a .pdf
• Copy and paste and format text using your mouse, keyboard, or an html editor’s toolbar menu
• Insert images or links into a file or html editor
• Search for information within a document using Ctrl+F or Command+F keyboard shortcuts
• Work in multiple browser windows and tabs simultaneously
• Activate a microphone or webcam on your device, and record and upload or link audio and/or video files
• Use presentation and graphics programs
• Follow an online pacing guide or calendar of due dates
• Use spell-check, citation editors, and tools commonly provided in word processing tool menus
• Create and maintain usernames and passwords

Additional Information: None