this was my least favorite of the classes - the lectures ere not informative, and far too lofty. The style class, the plot class and the setting class all had detailed, concrete teachings, whereas these lectures were too airy. Most of them consisted of authors chatting with each other. The assignments required real craft however, and it would have been helpful to LEARN those skills in the modules.For example, one assignment asked us to describe a character in a setting, while they were not actually there - say a divorced nurse in a hospital. Not once in the lectures were we ever taught HOW to do this. We watched a series of author fireside chats, and then people bumbled through the assignment. I really wanted Amy Bloom to just walk over to the board and draw a character and say this is a woman, shes divorced, shes middle class, she tends to get very angry when things dont go her way or whatever,and then draw out a list of how her internal states might manifest in the world around her - she throws things, shes disorganized, she writes mean notes in the patient charts.I wanted her to teach. She seems to think we already know how to do things like imply a characters state of mind through action. I mean, for a beginning writer, its helpful to just make a list of details about a character - where theyre from, what they like or dont like, what sort of flaws they might have and so on. We did barely any of this. It was assumed we knew the basics of characterization, but most students did not!some of the other students frustration and confusion came out in the peer review, which was a bad sign.
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