October 1, 2024 – L404 Silk Parachute – John McPhee
Course Description: Students will read John McPhee's Silk Parachute, participate in weekly topic discussions, and write a short response paper with a focus on using the crafts of writing personal essays.
Course Length: 4 weeks
Difficulty (1-5): 3
Required Text: Silk Parachute by John McPhee
October 3, 2024 – MFA03 Writing the Memoir Essay
Course Description: Recommended for bloggers, essayists, and nonfiction writers. This workshop is part of the MFA Nonfiction Series. Courses may be taken in any sequence, though we recommend taking MFA01 first, either with a scheduled class or by independent study.
Course Length: 2 weeks
Difficulty (1-5): 3
Required Text: Crafting The Personal Essay: A Guide for Writing and Publishing Creative Non-Fiction by Dinty W. Moore.
October 3, 2024 – MFA252 Emotions and POV
Course Description: Explore the relationships between POV, emotions, and body language.
Course Length: 2 weeks
Difficulty (1-5): 3
Required Text: Wired for Story by Lisa Cron (This is the 3rd of 12 independent MFA courses using Wired for Story.)
October 10, 2024 – MFA 165 Flash Fiction - Getting the Lead Out
Course Description: Flash Fiction - Getting the Lead Out
Course Length: 2 weeks
Difficulty (1-5): 3
Required Text: The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Writing Flash Fiction: Tips from Editors, Teachers, and Writers in the Field
October 17, 2024 – MFA253 What Protagonists Want
Course Description: Everyone—real and fictional has a goal. What your protagonist wants dictates how she reacts to everything that happens to her. In stories, all other considerations bend to the protagonist's external and internal goals. This course shows how to put this into practice.
Course Length: 2 weeks
Difficulty (1-5): 3
Required Text: Wired for Story by Lisa Cron (This is the 4th of 12 independent MFA courses using Wired for Story.)
October 17, 2024 – MFA04 The Classically Modern Essay
Course Description: Recommended for bloggers, essayists, and nonfiction writers. This workshop is part of the MFA Nonfiction Series. Courses may be taken in any sequence, though we recommend taking MFA01 first, either with a scheduled class or by independent study.
Course Length: 2 weeks
Difficulty (1-5): 3
Required Text: Crafting The Personal Essay: A Guide for Writing and Publishing Creative Non-Fiction by Dinty W. Moore.
October 24, 2024 – MFA367 Music and Metaphor
Course Description: This is the second workshop in a series of four courses. Each includes notes on craft, examples of model poems, and exercises as ways to encourage you in beginning to shape your own experience, language, and insights into poetry. The courses in this series can be taken in any order.
Course Length: 5 weeks
Required Text: In the Palm of Your Hand, Second Edition: A Poet’s Portable Workshop
October 24, 2024 – MFA166 – Flash Fiction – Prose Poetry
Course Description: Flash Fiction - Prose Poetry
Course Length: 2 weeks
Difficulty (1-5): 3
Required Text: The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Writing Flash Fiction: Tips from Editors, Teachers, and Writers in the Field
October 31, 2024 – MFA254 Protagonist inner Issues
Course Description: New material is crafted first and foremost with an eye toward how it will fit into what's already there because our unconscious allegiance is to what we've already written, rather than to the story itself. Outlining can be an intuitive, creative, and inspiring process, often surprisingly shorter than you might think.
Course Length: 2 weeks
Difficulty (1-5): 3
Required Text: Wired for Story by Lisa Cron (This is the 5th of 12 independent MFA courses using Wired for Story.)
October 31, 2024 – MFA05 The Contemplative Essay
Course Description: Recommended for bloggers, essayists, and nonfiction writers. This workshop is part of the MFA Nonfiction Series. Courses may be taken in any sequence, though we recommend taking MFA01 first, either with a scheduled class or by independent study.
Course Length: 2 weeks
Difficulty (1-5): 3
Required Text: Crafting The Personal Essay: A Guide for Writing and Publishing Creative Non-Fiction by Dinty W. Moore.
November 7, 2024 – MFA167 Flash Fiction – Put Yourself in Danger
Course Description: Flash Fiction - Put Yourself in Danger
Course Length: 2 weeks
Difficulty (1-5): 3
Required Text: The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Writing Flash Fiction: Tips from Editors, Teachers, and Writers in the Field
November 7, 2024 – MFA356: Shaping Forms
Course Description: MFA356, Shaping Forms, is the second in a series of 2 courses that introduces traditional poetic forms. This course includes Blank Verse, Heroic Couplet, the Elegy, the Pastoral, the Ode, and Open Forms, and a two-week workshop. Each week focuses on one form and includes reading its history and its contemporary context, and a "close-up" of an individual poet. The writing assignment is to write one poem using its formal characteristics.
Course Length: 8 weeks
Required Text: The Making of a Poem: A Norton Anthology of Poetic Forms
November 7, 2024 – MFA102 Sentence Structures: Propositions, Subtext, and Syntax
Course Description: “Proposition” is a familiar term to students of logic or rhetoric. It simply means an expressed thought put forward for the receiver to accept or not accept. Every individual idea, concept, action, emotion, and description we communicate through a sentence is a proposition, a thought represented by a sequence of words. Some sentences have a single proposition, some have many.
Course Length: 2 weeks
Difficulty (1-5): 3
Required Text: Reading material provided
November 14, 2024 – MFA255 Story is in the Specifics
Course Description: Learn how to make generalities specific. Abstract concepts, generalities, and conceptual notions have a hard time engaging us. Because we can't see them, feel them, or otherwise experience them we tend to find abstract concepts boring. This course will help bring your stories to life.
Course Length: 2 weeks
Difficulty (1-5): 3
Required Text: Wired for Story by Lisa Cron (This is the 6th of 12 independent MFA courses using Wired for Story.)
November 21, 2024 – MFA103 Creativity and the Cumulative Sentence
Course Description: The basic unit of thought is the sentence, and from these grow the paragraph, the short story, and the novel.
Course Length: 2 weeks
Difficulty (1-5): 3
Required Text: Reading material provided
November 28, 2024 – MFA168 Flash Fiction – Flash in a Pan
Course Description: Flash Fiction - Flash in a Pan
Course Length: 2 weeks
Difficulty (1-5): 3
Required Text: The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Writing Flash Fiction: Tips from Editors, Teachers, and Writers in the Field
November 28, 2024 – MFA256 Conflict and Change
Course Description: Learn why conflict and change in different in fiction than in real life, and how to use this understanding in your stories.
Course Length: 2 weeks
Difficulty (1-5): 3
Required Text: Wired for Story by Lisa Cron (This is the 7th of 12 independent MFA courses using Wired for Story.)
December 12, 2024 – MFA169 Flash Fiction – Expose Yourself
Course Description: Flash Fiction - Expose Yourself to Flash
Course Length: 2 weeks
Difficulty (1-5): 3
Required Text: The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Writing Flash Fiction: Tips from Editors, Teachers, and Writers in the Field
December 12, 2024 – MFA257 Cause & Effect
Course Description: Learn how to create a story the reader will care about by following an emotional cause-and-effect trajectory.
Course Length: 2 weeks
Difficulty (1-5): 3
Required Text: Wired for Story by Lisa Cron (This is the 8th of 12 independent MFA courses using Wired for Story.)
December 26, 2024 – MFA170 Flash Fiction – Load-bearing Sentences
Course Description: Flash Fiction - Load-Bearing Sentences
Course Length: 2 weeks
Difficulty (1-5): 3
Required Text: The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Writing Flash Fiction: Tips from Editors, Teachers, and Writers in the Field
December 26, 2024 – MFA050 Flash Nonfiction: Form
Course Description: MFA50 is the first in a series of flash nonfiction workshops (works under 2,000 words). Each of the eight courses in the series will use The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Writing Flash Nonfiction. Courses in the series may be taken in any sequence, though reading the text's Introduction is recommended for those who haven't taken MFA50 yet.
Course Length: 5 weeks
Required Text: The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Writing Flash Nonfiction: Advice and Essential Exercises from Respected Writers, Editors, and Teachers
December 26, 2024 – MFA259 Setups to Payoffs
Course Description: Learn how to satisfy readers with setups and payoffs.
Course Length: 2 weeks
Difficulty (1-5): 3
Required Text: Wired for Story by Lisa Cron (This is the 10th of 12 independent MFA courses using Wired for Story.)
December 30, 2024 – MFA700 Narrative Design
Course Description: MFA700 Narrative Design is an in-depth study in story evaluation with an emphasis on form. The first 13 weeks of the course works with example stories and evaluations. The course concludes with a 3-week short story workshop. Study includes General Story Analysis, Plot, Character, Tone, Time Management, Dialogue, Suspense, Point of View, Imagery, Description, Design, and Symbolism.
Course Length: 16 weeks
Required Text: Narrative Design: Working with Imagination, Craft, and Form by Madison Smartt Bell
