Advanced Creative Writing

Read, write, workshop, revise, repeat.

  • Course Length: 18 weeks
  • Course Type: Elective
  • Category:
    • English
    • Writing
    • High School

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Shmoop's Advanced Creative Writing course has been granted a-g certification, which means it has met the rigorous iNACOL Standards for Quality Online Courses and will now be honored as part of the requirements for admission into the University of California system.


Raise your hand if you want to be the next great American novelist.

Now, raise your hand if you want to be the next J.K. Rowling.

The next Shakespeare?

Nice. We like a student with lofty goals. And while we can't promise we'll secure your place in the writing hall of fame, we can promise we'll equip you with the tools you need to get started. Advanced Creative Writing is a semester-long course that teaches you the ins and outs of writing fiction, poetry, nonfiction, and drama. Yup—drama. Because you so need more of that in your life.

Unlike your average creative writing course, we're incorporating speculative fiction (that's sci-fi, fantasy, and horror) into this Common Core standards-aligned course. Whether you want to pen a personal essay that would inspire Joan Didion or a sci-fi epic that would inspire HBO to scramble for the TV rights, we've got you covered.

By the end of the course, you'll be able to

  • craft believable and compelling characters for any genre.
  • write effective and realistic dialogue for your oh-so-believable characters to say.
  • recognize the differences between fiction and nonfiction.
  • understand what makes poetry a unique art form.
  • understand what makes dramatic writing a genre worth studying—on page and onstage.
  • write your own pieces of short fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and drama, to be wrapped up in a nice, shiny portfolio at the end.

You'll write. You'll read (to inspire yourself to write). You'll revise. And you'll come out of this course with a better understanding of how to write well, which is a lesson every writer-to-be needs to learn.

You can thank us later. Preferably in the acknowledgements of your first novel.

Required Skills



Unit Breakdown

1 Advanced Creative Writing - The Big Short

Since we're not expecting you to write a novel in 90 days, short stories are a common form in this course. Unit 1 gives you a quick run-down on how to write short fiction specifically, with an emphasis on mystery as a genre. You'll read some classic mysteries and try your hand at writing short story sketches, all the while acquainting yourself with methods of characterization, scene setting, and dialogue-smithing. You'll also get acquainted with writers' workshops—two words no creative writer can afford to live without hearing.

2 Advanced Creative Writing - Move Over, Prose

Have you ever been so salty about something that you're like, "Man, I wish I could write a poem about this"? We don't blame you. Salt is a powerful motivator. And in Unit 2, you'll learn all the poetic devices you need to put those feelings into words—some rhyming, some not. You'll read a ton of professional poetry (or proetry, as we call it) to inspire poetic writing of your own. From the sonnet to the haiku, you'll have a crash course in a ton of different verses, meters, and rhyme schemes. Basically, you'll get everything you need to become a great poet—minus a beret.

3 Advanced Creative Writing - Real Life is as Strange as Fiction

In Unit 3, things get personal as you venture into the world of narrative essay writing. Nonfiction might be a genre you associate with textbooks and articles, but we'll prove to you that the nonfiction narrative is just as creatively inspired as the most fantastic fantasy novel. You'll study essays from greats like Joan Didion and George Orwell, and you'll learn how to sketch your own personal experiences into nonfiction pieces worth reading. Because, despite what Facebook might tell you, it actually does take some skill to make your personal life interesting to others.

4 Advanced Creative Writing - A Fable, an Allegory, and a Satire Walk Into a Bar

We're taking a turn for the unusual in Unit 4, where you'll learn how to write fables, allegories, and satire. Yep: You'll be writing with inspiration from Aesop and Amy Sedaris. Sure, fables might be kind of an old-fashioned writing form on the surface, but there's a lot of creative impact in these bite-sized little gems (also a lot of talking animals). You'll learn how to shape ideas into allegories, to make your writing extra deep. And you'll learn how to write satirical pieces without making people feel super bad about themselves.

5 Advanced Creative Writing - Speculation Nation

In our speculative fiction unit, you'll try your hand at science fiction, horror, and fantasy stories of your own. You'll learn that there's a lot more to this kind of writing than putting a dragon in the middle of a scene and calling it a day. Speculative fiction writing is often wrapped around a bunch of metaphors and allegories, and you'll learn how to make the most of imagery and figurative language as you write speculative fiction of your own. With greats like Neil Gaiman providing you inspiration, we're sure you'll be up to the task in no time.

6 Advanced Creative Writing - Please be Dramatic

We end the course with a dramatic flourish—literally, since this is the drama writing unit. You'll read a bunch of one-act plays and scenes to learn the basics of scriptwriting, with a particular emphasis on theater. Blocking, you'll discover, is more than a function you can use on Instagram when your weird ex annoys you; it's also one of the many essential technical elements that all dramatic writers need to include in their writing. At the end of the unit, you'll do a quick little wrap-up of every kind of writing you learned in the course, by putting your best pieces into a portfolio.


Sample Lesson - Introduction

Lesson 2.06: Tell Us How You Really Feel

An illustration of a Grecian muse.
If you don't have a poetic muse, you can borrow ours. Her name is Cloris, and she inspired us to write this course.
(Source)

So, the ballad's had its day in the sun (and then some). It's time to let another form of poetry shine—a form that, coincidentally, also has something in common with musical terminology.

We're talking about the lyric poem, here. In contemporary usage, the word "lyric" almost always applies to the words to a song. Don't worry, though. We won't be asking you to compose a song—although you can totes set your poem to music if you want to.

Lyric poems, especially the ones written a couple of hundred years ago, were often written to accompany music. Unlike fan favorite the ballad, though, the lyric poem doesn't typically tell a story. What the lyric does do is something many poets like even better than telling a story: It expresses feelings and insights.

The term lyric actually describes several types of poems, including odes, elegies, and sonnets. We'll look at some examples of those over the next few days.

As you move into consideration of these more complex forms, you won't write a complete poem every day. Instead, you'll be filling your writer's notebook with ideas, insights, images, and inspiration. Those flashes of brilliance will come in handy.

Trust us, here: you and your poetic muse will thank us later.


Sample Lesson - Reading

Reading 2.2.06: Love that Lyric

First thing's first: read Shmoop's lowdown on lyric poetry. Pay attention to what we have to say about a lyric poem's form, meter—and, most importantly, subject matter.

Got it? Great.

Now for a brief summary of a lyric's form. In general, lyrics

  • describe an emotion or insight.
  • convey one individual's perspective.
  • use first person.
  • usually rhyme.
  • use meter, usually, and most commonly it's iambic meter (da-DUM, da-DUM, da-DUM, da-DUM).

It probably won't surprise you to hear that many lyrics, describing the emotions and insights of a single speaker, are love poems.

Aw. We're blushing.

To get a decent sense of what we mean (and to prepare yourself for writing), we'd like you to read the following lyric poems:

When you're finished reading the poems, head over to Shmoop's page on "She Walks in Beauty" to give yourself a better idea of what that poem is all about.

Then, when you've really got the content of "She Walks in Beauty" down pat, read our page on the meter and rhythm of the poem. This should give you some inspiration on the writing front, so you can better craft a sweet lyric poem in the activity.

When you're finished reading, head over to the activity so you can take a crack at lyric-smithing yourself.


Sample Lesson - Activity

Activity 2.06a: So You Wanna be a Lyricist

Writing a lyric isn't necessarily a simple task. First, you've gotta have something worth—well, lyricizing about.

We mentioned that most lyric poems are love poems. Does that mean you have to have been in love to write one? Nah. We're going to give you the opportunity to write a lyric poem about anything that gets your heart a'fluttering, whether that thing is a romantic experience or a particularly difficult level of your favorite game.

Regardless of its subject, by the end of this lesson, you'll have written a lyric. We're going to work backwards and sort of reverse-engineer a lyric together—and we'll walk you through it step-by-step.

Step One

First, revisit the poems we just read and choose your favorite line or passage from one of those poems. Shmoop picked this one, from Thomas Moore's "Believe Me, If All Those Endearing Young Charms":

As the sunflower turns on her god, when he sets/The same look which she turned when he rose.

Once you've picked your fave line, freewrite for five minutes in response. You can talk about pretty much anything, but we want you to focus mainly on the feeling this particular line evokes in you.

Run out of things to say? Rewrite the last word or phrase until you come up with something—or move on to another poetic line as a prompt.

Here's how we started our freewrite:

The sunflower is such an interesting image; we don't know much about sunflowers, but we don't think they last all that long. Therefore, it's interesting how Moore uses the image of a day to suggest completeness and enduring love, even though we don't think of flowers as images suggesting permanence. If the relationship between the sunflower and the sun ("her god") represents faithful love, that happens in the course of a day…

BTW, a five-minute freewrite should be around 150 – 200 words.

Step Two

Reflecting on your freewrite, think of the feeling that your chosen image evoked in you, and brainstorm a list of images you could build upon to evoke something similar. Hone in on one image from that list and hang onto it.

Our freewrite reflected on the disparity between enduring love and fleeting life. If Moore used a flower to convey this image, we'd probably use something like a fruit. Just as sweet—just as fleeting.

Step Three

Of course, our lyric poem wouldn't be literally about a fruit. We'd have to use the fruit as an image to represent something deeper—something we really love.

That's why the next step is to choose a subject that you particularly care about, which you think could be well-represented with the image you chose in the last step. We're going to say "summer," because who doesn't love summer?

Step Four

Write that lyric poem.

Your poem should be at least four stanzas long, and should follow our lyric conventions. Remember, we said a lyric

  • describes an emotion or insight.
  • conveys one individual's perspective.
  • uses first person.
  • usually rhymes.
  • uses meter, usually, and most commonly it's iambic meter (da-DUM, da-DUM, da-DUM, da-DUM).

Also remember to use the image you decided upon in Step Two somewhere in your poem. Here's a stanza of Shmoop's ode to summer:

What ripe and rosy fruit may sway
Upon a heavy branch of green?
What sweet and tender succulence awaits me
When, on a hazy summer's day,
The morning air breathes crisp and clean,
And all the summer's wonders celebrate, free?

We went with iambic meter for this one—though not iambic pentameter. Our poem actually follows the same meter as this song. Or…this one.

Go ahead and write your own four-to-five stanza poem in a Word doc. When you're good n' ready, upload it below.


Sample Lesson - Activity

Activity 2.06b: Lyrics + Workshop

Workshop time. Today, we'll ask you to post your poem to the discussion board, then read and respond to at least two classmates' lyrics.

Remember our guidelines:

  • Be specific: Does the poem fit the lyric form? Does the meter flow? Is it written with iambs? Is it about love?
  • Be nice, though: If you wouldn't appreciate someone saying it to you, don't say it to anyone else.
  • Give generously: Read the poem you're reviewing attentively and thoughtfully.

Using the discussion board, respond to the following questions regarding at least two classmates' poems, in at least one complete sentence each:

  1. Did the poet use iambic meter?
  2. Did the poet write about something they love?
  3. Did they include some specific image?
  4. What do you think is the most important thing for the poet to consider as they revise this poem?
  5. As a reader, what do you appreciate most about this poem?

Without further ado, forge ahead and discuss away.