About The Book Doctor
Michelle Richmond is the New York Times bestselling author of The Year of Fog, No One You Know, Dream of the Blue Room, and the award-winning story collection The Girl in the Fall-Away Dress. She has taught in the MFA programs in creative writing at the University of San Francisco, California College of the Arts, St. Mary's College of Moraga, and Bowling Green State University. In Spring of 2012, she will hold the CJ Chair at Notre Dame de Namur University. She is the publisher of Fiction Attic Press.
Online Writing Classes
Classes fill up fast. Please use the signup form below to receive an email when new sessions are added.
Online Fiction Writing Class: Fundamentals of Fiction.
Duration: 6 weeks. Tuition: $249
In this online fiction writing class, you’ll learn how to create compelling characters, choose the best point of view,structure your story, write great dialogue, craft an engaging plot, and use setting and description to draw your reader into your fictional world. Interesting, information-packed lectures focus on the fundamental elements of fiction writing. Weekly writing exercises will help you practice the techniques covered in the craft lectures. Feedback from the instructor and your peers will help you identify your strengths, hone your skills, and turn skeletons into stories. Learn how to create conflict, sustain the reader’s interest, and move the story forward. Understand what makes a scene tick and what makes a character worth caring about. If you’re ready to dip your toes into the fictive waters, this online fiction writing class is for you.
Duration: 5 weeks. Tuition: $210.
In China they’re called “smoke-longs,” because people read them on the bus or at work during cigarette breaks. In Japan they’re called “palm-of-the-hand stories.” In America, we refer to them as “sudden fiction,” “flash fiction,” or, simply, “the very short story.” The beauty of flash fiction is that it evokes a world, a situation, a series of scenes, or perhaps a complex relationship in very few words. Whereas a novel takes years to write, a very short story may materialize in a day. For the purposes of this class, we define flash fiction as 750 words or fewer. You’ll come away from this five-week workshop with five complete flash fictions–brief, beautiful narrative gems ready to be released into the world.
Has anyone ever told you, “You should write a book”? Is your head full of interesting stories that you’ve never committed to paper? Then my online memoir workshop is for you. Using a series of short exercises, we will recall forgotten images, people, and places that will add life and variety to your writing. You’ll learn how to craft your personal experiences into compelling stories and how to use characterization, description, dialogue, and setting to draw readers into your world. Whether you’re writing to publish or simply saving your story for posterity, this memoir class will help you turn your life into art.
Duration: 6 weeks.
Tuition: $249