I don't think I've ever gone through a formal writing curriculum (except in "creative writing" class in seventh grade and "writing workshop 1" in tenth grade, which were not well-designed or particularly well-taught curricula for all that the work I did in them was formative for me); the only one I'd really heard of before this week was the "One Year Adventure Novel," and I didn't hear of that until after I joined HW, when I was well past its target experience level and nearly past its target age level (though I do still want to read that book and see what I can get from it). On the other hand, I can come up with any number of resources to draw on in creating such a curriculum. Here are some of the first ones that leap immediately to mind (without consulting my bookmarks database):
- The various "fractalling systems" developed by Seer et al. here on HW. ("Deep Culture Fractalling System" aka "DCFS", "Intense Race Fractalling System" aka "IRFS", and whatever the one for characters was called.)
- "The snowflake method" (which I wish I'd started using years ago).
- It may go without saying, but ... Jordan Smith's book Finding the Core of Your Story.
- The "Fantasy Worldbuilding Questions" by Patricia C. Wrede---more a collection of her pet peeves and known possible blind spots than a comprehensive list, but no less valuable for that. (And probably at least a quarter of the links I would pull out of my bookmarks would be posts on her blog.)
I hope this helps! (And if you'd like me to go digging through my bookmarks database for more articles and such, let me know.
)
But no, I'm focusing on the nonfiction/writing instruction end for now. Fiction to use as examples will come later.
They've helped my writing loads. O_O