This course is great for everyone interested in working on their writing skills, whether you're a beginner or more experienced. As a novice writer I learned about several useful tools that will help me improve my writing, got a lot more practice, and having a schedule helped me improve my daily routine for writing. For me the most valuable part was getting feedback and learning through analysing other people’s work. Oh, and just because the description says 1-2 hours of work per week doesn't mean you can't do a lot more!

The exercises are good, and the material is clear. I really like that the students have to review each other's work. I found the feedback helpful, and I found reading other people's work helpful too. I really would like a teacher to grade me as well though. There were a couple of times that I wasn't certain that I fully understood what I was doing, so to have me grade someone else left me feeling unguided and unqualified to assign a grade. I believe I got feedback saying just that at least once.

Pretty good class; good information. The classmates are engaged and have good feedback to give.

I'm frustrated at the lack of instructor (or even staff presence) until at least week 3, when finally a staff member answered *one* of the many student questions that have been piling up.

Students are a great resource for critiquing work, but we can't help each other with technical questions, or with assignment clarifications. So there *definitely* needs to be staff on hand for that.

Brando did a great job in presenting a structure for plot. I think his insights are valuable and he did tried to offer practical guidelines writers can use.

What I didn't like was the reviewing of the assignments. Some times I didn't receive valuable feedback ( the same sentence copy/pasted in every section) and someone failed me for not understanding my intentions because he was not an English speaker.

Away from that, I really liked Brando, his style, and his involvement.

The course itself has been really useful, although I'm not sure it has taught me much that is truly new. What It has done, though, is to fill in gaps, and to give me a big helping hand into understanding how to tackle what to write about. Beforehand, I suffered somewhat from blank canvas syndrome, but this course has given me ideas to get past that. The Coursera site and app could still do with some work, since collaboration with other students is not as easy as it could

This was a very good course, but I struggled with it initially, as I felt I had somehow fallen into the deep end of the pool... and had a bit of trouble wrapping my head around some concepts.

This was my own experience of it, but I wonder if students could somehow be 'eased' into it a bit, with more basic concepts, and take off from there.

This is another course that I feel could extend to 6 weeks, or even 5.

The instructor was very good and passionate about his subject.

I enjoyed this course and think the material and exercises helped me get going writing for the topic at hand. I think however, I'd like to get more valuable feedback sometimes. I don't think we have any control over it, but it felt that sometimes the peer feedback was just a one word answer. For example, when asked if a submission included "this" or "to identify pieces of the story", I felt most of the answers I saw were "yes". I'd like to get more helpful feedback.

The content of the course is very useful and delivered in a structured and effective way. I enjoyed the writing assignments and feedback opportunities. My only complaint is that there are a great number of people auditing the course and we had to create our own google community to share and get feedback as the assignments and feedback sections of the course are locked for all of the non-paying students.

Other than that is was very enjoyable and informative.

The course was really helpful and cleared a lot of things for me, answered numerous questions I had had about the writing process. Additionally, it gave me lots of useful tips and tools to use in difficult situations.

The downside is the people who are supposed to give you feedback and do not really feel like it so they just leave the spaces for feedback with a letter or just give very short replies (some of the peers are very helpful though).

I thought this course was excellent, it offered a lot of concrete ways to improve writing. I always like courses that can take abstract concepts especially in writing and break it down into lists and steps. I do wish that at least one of the assignments could be reviewed by the actual professor for feedback, rather than just peers. Some of the peer comments were very helpful, but others were just basic one word answers that didn't really help.

The only reason I don't give it a 5-star rating is that I would like some kind of interaction with the mentor-professor of the course. Besides, there were a lot of foul play scenarios when expecting a review of my assignments: often received answers from students stating that they had reviewed my assignments but they actually didn't, tricking you into believing you were one step closer to achieve revisions, other than that, I love the course

While this course was interesting, it seemed very light. There was only about 10 or so minutes of 'content' a week, plus some interviews (which were very interesting, but didn't feel as though they taught too much). The assignments were all good except for the third one about the physical object. It was a weird prompt and not in a good way.

I would recommend this course, but I'd also love to see it expanded a bit.

Get back to the basics with this course! An excellent foundation and a good reminder of what may have been learned in school many years ago. The work is only peer reviewed, so the feedback was hit and miss. Some of the co-learners lacked basic English language skills, so reading the material and feedback submitted was a bit more challenging. Overall, if you are looking to hone up your skills, take this class!

This course was good for giving me ideas about how to write and develop a plot for writing. It was also good for connecting me with people who could read my writing and give feedback. I'm not sure that should be considered an actual full college course, but it was definitely helpful. I have more confidence now and I am currently taking the second course in the Creative Writing specialization.

It is well structured course, and allows students to have better understanding of the core concepts that play out in writing. Moreover, this course would be more helpful if they provide feedback tailored to each student's essay. While having students asses each other helps improve their writing style, the personal feedback from a professional can highlight points that other may have overlooked.

Great lectures; excellent springboard for crafting scenes and plots. Good practice with the concept of "show, don't tell." Peer review is a great way to keep cost down, but can be difficult because it's possible to finish the course so quickly. In the last two weeks it was difficult to find a peer reviewer and it seemed like many of the more skilled writers in the class had already moved on.

The course helped me learn to apply some structure to my writing, which I felt I was lacking before. However, the motivation behind the rules that were set down in the lectures and assignments were not made clear, in my opinion. I would love to see more bad examples showcased, for instance, where the writer has flouted some/all rules of writing a good plot, and how it affects the reader.

This course was great, the coursework and professor included. The only thing that cost this course one start from me was that the peers are mostly not qualified for this type of work, and considering this is a peer graded course, if there are errors in your writing, maybe you should take a course on English grammar and vocabulary rather than an advanced creative writing specialization.

As a new creative writer, I learned several new things and appreciated the clarity of the videos. However, I was disappointed that there was no instructor interaction. I understand these are enormous classes and perhaps I was expecting too much as this is my first experience with this type of course. Feedback from other writers was usually spot on and better as the class progressed.

The Course material was really good and also the instructor. What was also excellent was the examples used throughout the course to make the student understand the material. Excellent course. I am giving four starts because, there needs to be a slight change in the review system as not all peers give out reviews properly and if that problem is fixed somehow, it will be a great course.

This course should be taken by everyone to flex their creative muscles, because the inspiration to write may strike anytime, but not being able to transcribe those thoughts will wreak havoc in your psyche. This course has a lot of good discussions with a lot of pointers to improve one's current writing pattern, no matter the level.

Thanks Brando!

It was pleasure auditing this course.

A good introductory course designed to be effective for people of a basic background and beginning skill level. As a course from Wesleyan I was hoping for something a little more robust or actually at a college-level, so I was a little disappointed at how rudimentary this course was. Still, I did learn some new things about plot and would recommend for the new or beginning writer.

I very much enjoyed the guidance and video direction. However, I am not comfortable evaluating other writers, and I would like direct feedback from the instructor. Still, this exercise was much more valuable that the local writing conference I attended which was more trade show than collaborative experience. I will continue with this model for the rest of the program.

It's definitely a course that will give you a general idea and structure of several elements you include on your writing daily, but perhaps don't even notice. It's for sure helped me get a better grip on the base of plotting and organizing ideas. All in all, a fun, easy course to try if you're looking to better your writing and complement your technique with new methods!

I really enjoyed the taped lectures and thought the assignments paired nicely. I'd like if Coursera set up a interactive element to the online learning environment such as a live chat with the instructor once a week and perhaps a live forum area with a set meeting time for the students. I've taken other online classes that have had these and found them extremely useful.