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Online  Classes
ONLINE CLASSES BY A MASTER TEACHER: ALICIA RASLEY
Writing classes by award-winning novelist and workshop leader Alicia Rasley conducted by email list, offering instruction, assignments, and expert critiquing for a single low price.
Four-week classes cost $80. Two-week classes are $40. Classes start the first week of the month. There will be several assignments every week. You don't have to do the assignments, but completing them is the best way to get the commentary and analysis that will help you improve your story.
Classes are student-friendly and require no fancy chat software or high-speed connection. You don't have to show up at some chat-site at a specified time. The classes are all conducted through a private email list, so you can read the lectures and do the assignments at your convenience. Classes provide expert instruction and lots of one-on-one help. Class lectures are followed by assignments. Alicia comments on all completed assignments, offering suggestions, questions, and analysis of your story and characters. This is an inexpensive way to get both information and coaching.
- Basic Plotting — $80
(4-week class) Enroll Now!Are you just starting a book? Just starting to plot the book? This is the class for you. We start by getting to know your main characters, and then explore the conflict, and finally plot out the major turning points. By discovering your characters' needs, values, and strengths, you can find the plot events that will challenge and develop them—and intrigue the reader. Each student's assignments will receive personal comments and suggestions.
- Advanced Plotting — $80
(4-week class)Enroll Now!Do you already have a basic plot? Have you written a draft and need to revise? Advanced Plotting guides you through deepening the characterization, improving the logic and adding drama to the events. Each student's assignments will receive personal comments and suggestions.
- Dazzle the Editor — $80
(4-week class)Enroll Now!Learn tricks that will help your book stand out from the others and make an editor take notice. If you're a student who is ready to jump up to the next level and start thinking like an editor, here is your chance. A few key ingredients—freshness, voice and power are what separate "no problem" novels from those that make an editor say "wow!" Award-winning author and teacher Alicia Rasley guides you through the process of turning your good novel into a great one. This class is appropriate for people either finished with or well into a book, or who have already taken one of the plotting classes. Each student's assignments will receive personal comments and suggestions.
- Action and Interaction: Your Characters in Love and War — $80
(4-week class)Enroll Now!Activate your characters by learning what they need to do to meet the challenges of the plot and their own inner needs. Here's where you focus on your major characters (protagonists and antagonists) and their journeys, and keep them active and involved every step of the way. No prerequisite, but Plotting 1 would be helpful. Each student's assignments will receive personal comments and suggestions.
- Battle for Love: Romantic Conflict — $80
(4-week class)Enroll Now!Character-centered plotting techniques can help you plot your romantic journey from initiating event (first meet) to resolution (final commitment). This class will focus on the romantic plot and how it interacts with the external plot. The Basic Plotting class will be a helpful first step, but this class will stand on its own. You'll get personal responses to each assignment with comments and suggestions.
- Troublemakers: Creating Characters Ready to Make Trouble — $80
(4-week class)Enroll Now!Trouble. Yes, trouble. That's what your characters need to experience, and to make, to create a dramatic and entertaining plot. It's true of your heroes and heroines, and true of your villains too. They must be vital people with values and desires, strengths and weaknesses, plans and agendas. So whether they want to make trouble or not, this class will help you chart their course through complication and conflict. Each student's assignments receives personal comments and suggestions.
- Dance With Disaster: Building Bolder Scenes — $80
(4-week class)Enroll Now!Scenes are the building blocks of tension and drama. Long after a reader has forgotten plot details, she'll remember the powerful scenes—and those scenes are the ones that will attract an editor. In this class, you will learn techniques to power up each scene, with special attention to the major plot-changing scenes. You'll learn how to pre-plan a scene for greater writing efficiency, and how to revise a scene for greater drama. Each student's assignments will receive personal comments and suggestions.
- The High-Concept Synopsis — $80
(4-week class)Enroll Now!Whether your book is finished or not, writing a synopsis is a good exercise because it shows in skeleton form the conflicts and events that will power your plot and develop your characters. We will discuss what editors mean when they say they want a "high concept" synopsis, the different forms and purposes of the synopsis, and give you pointers on how to write a synopsis that will concisely tell your story and intrigue an editor. This class includes a personal synopsis critique session in the final week.
- Power Point of View — $40
(2-week class)Enroll Now!Learn new techniques so you can use POV to reveal your characters, increase suspense, and punch up the drama in your scenes. This isn't a "don't do" class! You won't be told you can't do what you want; rather you'll learn HOW to do what you want. No POV rules—just POV tools! Alicia will guide you through discovering your characters' unique perspectives, choosing the POV approach right for you and the scene, and applying this new knowledge to your own story. Each student's assignments receive personal comments and suggestions. No prerequisite required.
- Dialogue Dynamics — $40
(2-week class)Enroll Now!Dialogue isn't just speech. It's conversation—action and interaction, cause and effect, stimulus and response. In this class, you'll learn how to turbocharge those exchanges between characters with background action, introspection, judicious pauses, quote tags, and of course, vivid and individual speech. Each student's assignments will receive personal comments and suggestions.
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