Do you think we'll have anymore classes on writing?

MOO

I really love the Ann Whitford Paul video. Just wondering idf we might have any more like it?

Lee White

Possibly, We are building our whole curriculum right now. The only snag is I'm not sure what content we could do as a video that Ann's class doesn't already cover. I'm open to ideas. We could possibly run a "live/Interactive" class where people can develop their stories.

Let me know what you think.

Will Terry

@marsha-kay-ottum-owen Hi Marsha - one of our challenges with writing classes is finding the right people to teach them. We want them but we've also had too many experiences where people can write but not teach it - they have a problem imagining what it was like BEFORE they could write. A good teacher has a great memory of what it was like when they were trying to learn their craft. So - we're looking - always looking.

MOO

@will-terry That makes sense. People get so knowledgable and comfortable with what they do that it's hard for the to come down to the lower levels I remember when I homeschooled my kids, I would sometimes need to send my kids to their Dad for help. He has a PhD in physics. They would beg me not to send him in his office. Ha! Ha! Now they love talking to him and asking him questions about things because somehow, thanks to community college and math classes they are smarties like him

@Lee White I'll see if I can come up with any great ideas. I have her book and I need to go through it again. I find it hard to do it on my own. I guess having good writers to critique what we've written like you svs teachers do with our art might be helpful. But, I don't know how you would do that unless you had permanent professional writers stalking the forums

What if we had a separate forum for sharing writing? I am a part of two small critique groups but, would a forum be too big of a place to do that? Would it get out of hand?

xin li

@Lee-White I have been looking for an interactive class which is focus on developing stories and creating picture book dummy. I am imaging a class like this will cover a bit of basic writing for children's book, but mainly focus on creating successful thumbnails for an entire story, taking a couple spreads to detailed sketch with value studies, and maybe possiblely taking 1-2 spreads to finish.

Lee White

@xin-li I've done some classes that way, but the hard part that unless the writing is good, we never make it to the illustration part. A lot of people want to use their own writing for assignments, but then if the content is off we spend a lot of time figuring that out. And sometimes the writing never makes it to a point where the illustration can move forward. So in most of my book classes I typically give a few different preexisting texts to work with. Otherwise the class ends up all over the place.

I think a writing class needs to stay with writing and not mix in the illustration. Then, once the writing is done (and good), we move on to an illustration only class.