Fiction 101
The fundamentals of writing fiction, in the form of a literary journal — not a manual, not a tutorial, not a funnel. Start anywhere. Stay as long as you like.
Most courses in fiction either treat the reader as a student in a classroom or a customer in a queue. Fiction 101 does neither. It is eight short lessons, written in the same voice as the rest of Creator's Hearth, each followed by a writing exercise and a brief check-in. There is nothing to sign up for, nothing to pay, nothing to unlock. Progress is kept in your browser — so this computer remembers where you left off, and nothing is sent anywhere.
The course is designed for writers who are early in their fiction — who want to finish a first short story, or who have finished a few but aren't sure why the last one didn't quite work. Intermediate writers are just as welcome, and should feel free to skim the parts they already know and sit with the parts they don't. Eight to twelve hours of attention will carry a reader comfortably through the full course. Spread it across a weekend or a month, whichever the season asks for.
"A word after a word after a word is power."
— Margaret Atwood, "Spelling," True Stories, 1981
The eight modules below build on one another but do not demand strict sequence. Module 1 and Module 2 provide the mental scaffolding for everything that follows; after that, the order is a suggestion, not a rule. Completing a module's check-in marks it done; its exercises are saved alongside so the final revision module has something to return to.
The modules
Cards reflect your progress on this browser. Clearing cookies will reset them.
A reasonable cadence is one module per week, finished on a Sunday morning with coffee. A compressed cadence is one module per day across a long weekend. A reasonable cadence is also no cadence — reading one and then leaving the rest for another season.
Every module has a lesson essay, one or two writing exercises, and a short check-in. The check-in is not a test; four of five correct marks the module complete. The writing exercises are kept in this browser for the reader's later use, especially in Module 8, which asks the reader to return to what they wrote earlier.