Creative Nonfiction 101 is a 6-week course that combines lectures with hands-on writing exercises, designed for beginners and anyone seeking to refresh their skills. You can access a detailed syllabus for this course further below.
Creative nonfiction draws from real-world experiences and uses the craft and vitality of fiction to shape truth into compelling stories. These narratives span every imaginable style and subject: from intimate schoolyard memories to international adventures in Nepal to explorations of the universe itself. Creative nonfiction appears across books, magazines, newspapers, websites, blogs, newsletters, and numerous other platforms.
This course provides an introduction to six major forms of creative nonfiction: memoir, personal essay, feature articles, profiles, reviews, and travel writing. You will learn what defines each form and how to write them effectively. This is a foundational survey, requiring no commitment to any particular project or specific nonfiction type.
If you want to discover the vast possibilities of nonfiction writing, this guided exploration is your starting point.
Course Details:
The 101-level courses do not include workshopping of student projects. However, students write essays and exercises that receive constructive feedback.
This course explores the primary forms of creative nonfiction and their corresponding techniques. Course components include:
- Lectures
- Writing exercises
Weekly Schedule:
- Week 1: Memoir Examining meaningful aspects of your life, mining your memory for authentic material, and developing techniques for telling real-life stories.
- Week 2: Personal Essay Discovering how any topic can become a personal essay, balancing the personal with the universal, and developing shape and voice in your writing.
- Week 3: Feature Articles Mastering journalistic storytelling, understanding feature structure, and learning what makes features compelling and engaging.
- Week 4: Profiles Selecting subjects to profile, conducting effective interviews, and learning how to bring a person to life on the page.
- Week 5: Reviews Understanding the purpose of reviews, balancing facts with informed opinions, and writing for your target audience.
- Week 6: Travel Writing Exploring travel articles and travel memoirs, and discovering what comes next in your nonfiction writing journey.
Important Note: Content and topics may vary among different course sections.
About Online Classes:
- Online classes bring together students from across the globe to study at Gotham, New York City's premier writing school.
- Classes run asynchronously, not in real time. You can participate whenever you choose, day or night, though classes progress week by week with specific milestones to achieve each week.
- You can participate in online writing classes from anywhere with internet access. While most online students are in the United States, we welcome participants from nearly every country worldwide.
- Technical support is available throughout the course.
- Beyond the flexibility of time and location, you maintain complete records of all class materials, which you can print and preserve for future reference. Materials are provided in text and image formats, not video.
