Purdue OWL (Online Writing Lab)
The OWL also offers resources on MLA and APA citation formats. "We offer free resources including Writing and Teaching Writing, Research, Grammar and Mechanics, Style Guides, ESL (English as a Second Language), and Job Search and Professional Writing."
Writing Prompts & Exercises
-
The Names Generator ProjectThe Names Generator Project created by Danish web developer, Niels Gamborg, is an easy way to randomly generate a list of names for business, creative writing, projects, etc. with the simple click of button. He has created three name generator catorgies to choose from: Business Names; Nicknames, and Fantasy Names.
-
Prompt Literary MagazineThe prompt literary magazine is a biannual online magazine that publishes creative work that reflects experimental and traditional work based on writing prompts and exercises.
-
Start Writing FictionThis course from The Open University in Britain looks at how characters might be drawn and how setting is established. It works on the different levels of characterization, from flat to round, and how character and place interact. It also works on the effect of genre and how genre can be used. Contents: 1) Character. 2) Setting. 3) Genre.
Open Courses
-
Playwrighting IThis class introduces the craft of writing for the theater. Through weekly assignments, in class writing exercises, and work on a sustained piece, students explore scene structure, action, events, voice, and dialogue. We examine produced playscripts and discuss student work. This class's emphasis is on process, risk-taking, and finding one's own voice and vision.
-
Playwrights' WorkshopThis course provides continued work in the development of play scripts for the theater. Writers work on sustained pieces in weekly workshop meetings, individual consultation with the instructor, and in collaboration with student actors, directors, and designers. Fully developed scripts are eligible for inclusion in the Playwrights' Workshop Production.
-
Transmedia Storytelling: Modern Science FictionTransmedia narratives exist across multiple storytelling platforms, using the advantages of each to enhance the experience of the audience. No matter which medium nor how many, the heart of any successful transmedia project is a good story. In this class we will spend time on the basics of solid storytelling in speculative fiction before we move on to how to translate those elements into various media. We will then explore how different presentations in different media can complement and enhance our storytelling. While we will read scholarly articles and discuss ideas about transmedia, this is primarily a class in making speculative fiction transmedia projects. We will analyze the strengths and weaknesses of various mediums and consider how they complement each other, and how by using several different media we can give the audience a more complete, rewarding, and immersive experience.
Videos
-
Inside Creative Writing: Robert Olen ButlerWatch a Pulitzer Prize-winning fiction writer create a short story in real time, from first inspiration through all the bad sentences and wrong turns to final, polished story, commenting on his process as he works. (1st of 17 episodes)
-
Your Book Starts Here -- Storyboarding For WritersPopular book-writing blogger (http://HowtoPlanWriteandDevelopaBook....),
award-winning author, and master writing instructor Mary Carroll Moore helps you take your novel, memoir, or nonfiction book from idea to print! -
Kurt Vonnegut On The Shapes Of StoriesShort lecture by Kurt Vonnegut on the 'simple shapes of stories.'