Online Course – Certified Professional Internship in Memoirs and Personal Essays: Writing About Yourself from Wesleyan University

Memoir and personal essay: managing your relationship with the reader

Course 1

• 5 hours
• 4.3 (244 ratings)

Course Details

What will you learn?

• The blank page can be the scariest obstacle in writing.
• In this course, aspiring writers will assemble a “starter kit” for approaching the blank page by developing constructive ways to think about the entire writing process.
• The course offers ways to think about the writer’s relationship with her material and ultimately develop a writing style that is unique to her.

First-person writing

Course 2

• 5 hours
• 4.7 (113 ratings)

Course Details

What will you learn?

• If you’ve always wanted to tell your story – in a memoir, personal essay, or any other type of autobiographical nonfiction – but felt like you lacked the tools or framework, this course is for you.
• We will learn how first-person writing can be structured to give the reader a sense of movement.
• We’ll look at how language can be used to create tone, so that the emotional charge of your words is as powerful as the plot itself.
• Let’s think about the writer’s responsibility to the reader: the importance of being a guide who introduces the reader to the sensory, emotional, and intellectual experience that you intend to share through your writing.

Skills you will gain

• Category: English language
• Category: Creative Writing
• Category: Storytelling
• Category: Illustrated

Writing a personal essay

Course 3

• 6 hours
• 4.5 (83 ratings)

Course Details

What will you learn?

• Here you can create your personal essay or expand it into a full memoir – from planning and structure to the bold lines and layers of meaningful detail.
• You will open up the opportunity to find your voice and see it awakened, animated and enhanced on the page.
• This is your opportunity to tell your story in a way that invites readers; your stories are written to be read.
• The memoir and the personal essay are among the best-selling and most recognizable genres in the world of modern creative writing.

Skills you will gain

• Category: Writing

Writing stories about ourselves

Course 4

• 9 hours
• 4.2 (93 ratings)

Course Details

What will you learn?

• In this course, creative nonfiction writers will explore traditional storytelling methods, especially those that overlap between fiction and memoir.
• By examining examples from different genres, including films, songs, paintings – even the theme music for “Jaws”!
• We will focus on critical elements, such as how to start a story, what makes good content, the essential use of details, the benefits and limitations of dialogue, and the power of white space.
• The ultimate goal is for us to become aware of the audience when we write, so that the documentation of our lives begins to feel like a “performance” unfolding on paper rather than as written in a private journal entry.