Discussions In Class

Your Muse  demands to write in a lovely place with natural lighting, preferably while your grandmother bakes biscuits and your grandfather brews coffee.  Or in a secluded cabin beside a mountain lake.
However, the reality is that most of your time is spent on the job or in your affordable apartment.   How can you write when [...]

This student loves a story written by someone else, and has felt inspired to try something similar to it.  But there’s a troublesome doubt  putting a hitch in his happy dance of creativity: is his story truly a new story or is it too much like the inspiration piece?
Hmm.
Sounds like a great topic for discussion.

This student has written a character with an important tattoo.  Only one problem: she’s never experienced tattooing.  So she goes out to her classmates for information.  How does it feel to get a tattoo?  What kind of care does it need as it heals?  What about wall flash or custom art?  Is a tattoo sunburn [...]

Protagonists can be easy and fun to write.  They’re the driving force of the story, and they’re usually good guys–heroes, even–and they’re probably going to survive and prevail.
This Sideways student was happy with her protagonist, but felt her antagonist was a bit blah.  So, she threw her question to her Sideways compadres, who had plenty [...]