Genre Writing: Fiction, Poetry, Nonfiction, and Creative Craft

Course summary: Learn to choose genres, meet and reshape reader expectations, write fiction and poetry, craft truthful creative nonfiction, blend forms, develop characters and worlds, write purposeful dialogue, revise with feedback, and present a complete genre-based project.

Course overview: Ten modules contain forty independent textbook-style lessons. Each lesson defines a useful decision, models it in a fresh scene or passage, and guides a small written result. You may build a single portfolio across the course or complete each lab separately. The final project can be fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, or a script, as in the source manuscript.

Intended students: Beginning and developing writers who want an introduction to genre choices across literary forms. No prerequisite reading is required.

Learning outcomes: Name a genre’s promise; distinguish invented from factual claims; write form-conscious poems; develop a character and believable setting; use dialogue and subtext; compare genres; use researched details responsibly; revise from evidence; and present a finished piece.

Study time: Plan about two to four hours for each lesson, plus time for the final revision and presentation. Work at a pace suited to your experience.

Completion: Finish the lesson labs and self-checks; submit the capstone artifact, revision notes, genre statement, and presentation outline. A score of 70/100 or better on the capstone rubric indicates satisfactory completion.

AI Writing Partner: You may ask an AI tool to act as a reader, compare alternate outlines, or point out confusion in a paragraph you wrote. Check every claim and decide which changes to accept. Never treat invented citations, invented memories, or invented interview statements as facts. You remain the author and make every creative and ethical decision.