I recently completed the 5-course specialization in creative writing. For the most part the course material presented was good, especially the courses on plot, on setting, and on style. The course on characterization was a little vague. From the syllabus, it looked like it would be a good course, but the instructor did not follow the syllabus and was often very unfocussed in her presentation.

The weakness with this specialization is that all the feedback to the writer is provided by peers in the course. This I found very disappointing. Many of the other students were honestly very poor writers, and as a result, the feedback I received on my assignments was very superficial. In addition, rather than being able to learn from reading the writing of others, I found for the most part that the pieces submitted by others were very lacking.

If you take this course, know that it will provide you some good information about writing fiction, but the feedback you receive on your assignments will not help you learn. You will need to find another peer group of writers to help you with that.

Course would be more meaningful if a mentor intermittently commented on a students work.

Excellent teaching, be aware the meat of this course is in the interviews. If you read and watch them then the assignments are self-explanatory. The discussion boards were however a disappointment.

This the best writing course that I have taken. Only drawback is that while I appreciate the positive feedback, it would be helpful to have professional feedback.

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, she's divorced, she's middle class, she tends to get very angry when things don't 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, she's 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 they're from, what they like or don't 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.

I did not feel like I took anything away from this class, as evidenced by my rambling notes. There was very little actual theory delineated that could be applied in my writing and in the actual assignments. It was just a series of shop talks and read excerpts with very little "teaching." I definitely learned more from the first module in this certification. I would not recommend this professor's class and honestly think Coursera might want to read through some of the forum discussions and see I am not alone.

A really thorough course into making characters. I personally think that I have leaped further, in the quality of my writing. Recommend it to anyone willing to spend time to work on their writing.

Was really looking forward to this section but felt it was lacking in content.

Too many interviews which were full of quotations and praise for other authors and was left feeling disappointed.

I loved this course! Extremely useful and hands on. The course instructor was really impressive, both informative and empathetic, both arty and to the point. Totally admired her style of instruction.

The information I need to craft compelling characters. Wouldn't have learned this information just by reading books! Amy is an excellent instructor, and the work is challenging but not unreachable.

This course covers every aspect of building a character for a beginner to understand how this world works. I would have loved a bit of more readings with examples of what was being taught to us. But overall, really good course.

Overall, I did like the course, but some of the assignment's descriptions could have been improved.

This course was overall 'nice'. Except for the peer review assignment. The instructors excelled in the teaching industry, but there were many other 'peers' that did not support or participate in any of the assignments. There were numerous amounts of plagiarizers, and some people even copied off my assignment. I mean, how not-smart is a person to copy off a person, and let the writer grade his own work? There were also unbelievable reviewers. The 'peers' wrote "NO" on each of the

While I did gain some expertise from the course I thought the lessons were brief and lacked enough examples. Also, much of the peer feedback I received was unhelpful. Fifty percent of my feedback was, "Good" or "Yes". Without instructor feedback, peer feedback becomes very important. Good/yes were not the answers requested by the feedback questions. Feedback was meant to be a few sentences.

Some of the assignments are a little odd. They need a revisal by the instructor based on student feedback. I suspect the teacher made this course and moved on to other things without checking back on it's success or failure. The teacher is a really great writer, but her teaching and communication style is pretty abstract.

The videos provided some great information, but the assignments often seemed unrelated to the weekly videos. Although I figured I had plenty to learn so I forced myself to do the best I could with the assignments, I often wasn't clear what the assignment was trying to teach me.

Good course but let down by a lack of required readings and the awful peer review system. Amy Bloom is also often seemingly intentionally ambiguous in her assignment specifications which is extremely frustrating. Nonetheless, there's a lot of valuable information here.

I found the lectures were not providing enough details and practical informations on how to build a credible character. There should be more references to famous novels.

Some of the assignments are really confusing, with non to little actionable steps to take. This course can be way more streamlined. Enjoyed it nonetheless

The course was great but the quality of the student/peer review was abysmal.

I liked the content, but found the exercises were too complex for a learner.

I am taking the specialization course and compared to the other courses, which are detailed and layed out topic by topic with clear examples and assigments referring back to previous lessons, this course seemed very scattered and abstract. The subject topics were often diverted to something else mid-way through the explanation. It made it very difficult to know if I understood the topics. It almost seemed as if the instructor rushed her videos because sge had something better to do and relies on "shop talk" so much to explain creating a character rather than explaning it concisely herself. Since the assigments are peer reviewed, no one can really tell you if you're wrong because we are all learning for the same videos with the same scattered information. I found some of the assigments frustrating because of the lack of explanation throughout the course.

I prefered the Craft of Plot course to this one, and I almost felt like I learned more about creating characters in that one than I did here. I didn't feel like there was a lot of structure to this course, and the majority of the videos are shop talks about things that are somewhat unrelated to the topic of the module. The instructions for the assignments were somewhat difficult to understand too, however I did feel like some learning was acquired by doing them.

Amy Blooms assignments were so complicated and obtuse that they were hard to dive into. The lectures didn't particularly hold me , either. Often, what the lecture was titled and what was taught seemed totally unrelated. Could be improved but at least it kept me writing.

The course, while an interesting topic, was very poorly constructed. The "lessons" were weak, the "instructor" rambled in her interviews, and the assignments were vague at best. I had to search the discussion boards to find guidance on how to complete the assignments. The instructions actually given for the assignments were rambling, almost stream-of-consciousness sentences that gave little instruction. The lessons had little to do with actual character development and nothing about how to write a believable character; merely repetitive"insights" from other authors.

At first, I had really looked forward to the class, but once it started I worked fast to get it over with as quickly as possible. I was very disappointed in this course and wish I hadn't wasted my money or time. Please, consider a different instructor and assignments for the future. This was a poor excuse for a class.