Students meet those who appear throughout the course, including authors, educators, professionals in all fields who use writing on the job, and first-year writing students from colleges and universities across the country. Students learn to grapple with the intimidating process of selecting a topic to write about as well as the challenge of finding a unique angle when an instructor or boss selects the topic. Eastern Description Students, teachers, and writers share their observations on what makes good description and offer tips to help students develop strong and accurate description skills. Featured writing examples include a police officer s arrest report, a music critic s magazine story, and scene-setting and character development in the work of novelists Sue Grafton, Tom Robbins, and Joseph Wambaugh. Students and writers such as novelist Ernest J. Gaines and science fiction author Kevin J. Anderson describe how they translate their joy of reading into better writing.
Students also learn to move from reading for pleasure to deciphering academic texts.
This program shows the relationships among narrative writing, personal writing, and academic writing. Science fiction author William Gibson, mystery writer John Morgan Wilson, and novelist Charles Johnson present students with tips for telling a good story. Eastern Voice Writers choose their language and tone depending on the audience. In this program, students, teachers, and writers, including Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Richard Aregood and novelist David Guterson, dissect both the esoteric and mechanical aspects of creating a writer s voice. This program explores the process of macro-revision and offers a variety of strategies to help the student writer revise.