2025 Odyssey Online Classes

Apply by November 22, 2024

It’s Odyssey Online Class season! Build new skills and make your writing stronger and more memorable. We’ve got three classes to choose from. Attend live, online class sessions for intensive instruction and an interactive experience. Assignments will provide you deep practice in trying out the new techniques you learn. Feedback from the instructor and your classmates will help you improve even more. A private meeting with the instructor will allow you to hone in on your particular concerns.

Our three instructors have been highly praised by students. The best way to succeed as a writer is to continue to build your skills. Now is the time!

Bodies and Heartbeats: Crafting Character from the Inside Out
Course Meets: Thursdays, January 14 – February 11, 2025
Instructor: E. C. Ambrose

“If you will try being fictional for a while, you will find that fictional characters are sometimes more real than people with bodies and heartbeats.” — Richard Bach

In her critiques as a guest lecturer at the Odyssey Writing Workshop and as a critiquer for the Odyssey Critique Service, Elaine Isaak, who writes as E. C. Ambrose, has become legendary for identifying weaknesses in character and suggesting brilliant yet simple ways to strengthen characters. This course will help you to develop a clearer sense of what makes a powerful character and will teach you the techniques you need to develop strong characters.

The first duty of the fiction writer is to make the reader care about people that don’t exist. In this workshop, we’ll talk about how to create the core of a sympathetic character and bring that character to life through words so that the reader invests in the dreams and challenges of your imagined people. Students will study and discuss examples, perform exercises to practice creating sympathetic and believable characters, and write short-shorts that put these new skills into practice. Students will also provide critiques of their classmates’ work.

The course is intended for writers of fantastic fiction, though fiction writers who focus on other genres could profit from this class and would be welcome. The course will cover issues relevant in middle grade, young adult, and adult fiction.

It will be most valuable for intermediate writers, since it will assume students already understand the basics of characterization.

“Before, my characters began their existence as plain-vanilla, and I tried to develop them as the story progressed. Bodies and Heartbeats gave me the tools to create characters that engage from the moment they step on the page, characters ready for conflict, adventure, and suffering.” — Scott T. Barnes

Getting the Big Picture: The Key to Revising Your Novel
Course Meets: Tuesdays, January 7 – February 18, 2025
Instructor: Barbara Ashford

Finished the first draft of a novel? In the final stages? Struggling with revisions? Getting the big picture can help you bring your novel to life.

Writers often approach revisions as an opportunity to polish their manuscripts rather than to take a hard look at the story itself. If your plot meanders and your protagonist’s goals are unclear, polishing your prose won’t help.

Award-winning author Barbara Ashford believes the most important skill required to transform a promising novel into a published one is the ability to see the “big picture,” to understand how the building blocks of a novel relate to each other, to identify weaknesses, and to make the necessary changes to strengthen the story.

Barbara will discuss the big picture elements at the foundation of every novel: premise, promise, theme, world, character, and plot. The course will explore ways to deepen the connection between these elements and create a more unified and powerful story, the key to lifting a novel out of the slush pile and onto an agent’s desk.

Through lecture, discussion, and writing assignments, students will analyze their premise, the promise that the story is making to readers, the themes they are exploring, the world they have created, the protagonist’s backstory, motivations, and goals, and the plot events they have chosen to lead the reader from the story’s opening to its final page. Analysis of the protagonist’s character arc and the causal relationships between plot events will help students add conflict, complexity and tension to their novels and emotional power to their storytelling.

The course is intended for all fiction writers, with an emphasis on those who write fantastic fiction. While it is targeted to those who have finished the first draft of a novel and are ready to begin revisions, analyzing these big picture issues can also be valuable to writers who are still working on their first draft and for those striving to improve their third or fourth draft. The course will be most valuable for intermediate writers, since it assumes students already understand the basics of novel writing.

“A novel is a huge project and Barbara’s course really helped me focus my work. She took me through a process that allowed me to see my novel as a thematic and spiritual whole. Once I understood better ‘what I meant to say’ with this story, I was able to craft a new outline that will help enormously in moving my next rewrite forward.” — Elise Forier Edie

Mix-Up, Mash-Up, Hybrid, Fusion: How to Write a Blended-Genre Story
Course Meets: Wednesdays, January 9 – February 6, 2025
Instructor: Gregory Ashe

Do you love stories that combine more than one genre? Romance and fantasy? Mystery and science fiction? Cozy and … horror? (Okay, maybe not that last one.) Do you struggle to balance the demands and expectations of multiple genres in your own writing? Do the story structures seem incompatible? Do you want to create the same cross-genre story experience for other readers that you enjoyed, but you’re not sure how?

Learning how to write a blended-genre story can help with all these issues.

This course covers the concepts and techniques that will help you write effective blended-genre stories, with a focus on combining mystery, romance, and cozy (meaning, low-stakes, comforting stories) with fantastic fiction, an umbrella term encompassing fantasy, science fiction, horror, magical realism, and anything in between. Students will learn the core elements of genre, including tropes, story structures, character types, plot devices, and story turns. They will also learn about the important role of reader expectations and the emotional experience that is key to genre fiction, as well as the importance of genre considerations for successfully marketing their work.

Students will also learn how to blend genres in their own stories. In particular, students will learn how to examine their own writing to identify a base genre, to which they will add additional genre elements. Students will be introduced to techniques for combining different story structures, with an emphasis on controlling pacing, conflict, tension, and suspense in a way that is appropriate for the blended genres. Students will consider solutions for the additional complications that cross-genre writing presents to character arcs and themes. The course will address other challenges particular to multigenre writing.

Students will also hone their ability to dissect other authors’ work, particularly when it comes to balancing genre expectations and creating a satisfying experience for readers. This practice will help students to continue mastering these techniques independently after the conclusion of the course.

The course is intended for writers of fantastic fiction. Since this course focuses on blending genres, fiction writers who focus on other genres could profit from this class and would be welcome. The course will cover issues relevant in middle grade, young adult, and adult fiction.

It will be most valuable for beginner to intermediate writers.

“The Odyssey Online course Scene and Sequel taught by Gregory Ashe was a great experience. I especially appreciated Greg’s enthusiasm, his willingness to share and discuss techniques both in and out of class, and the insights he gave me into using scene and sequel to hone my pacing. It was also a pleasure and a privilege to be in class with such dedicated, serious and imaginative fellow writers. Well worth the time and the hard work!” — Caroline Lee

Apply by November 22, 2024

If you’re willing to work hard, hear about the weaknesses in your writing, move outside your comfort zone, and try new techniques, then Odyssey Online is for you.

Odyssey also offers many resources for writers, including podcasts, an online monthly discussion salon, a blog, a critique service, coaching, consultations, and Your Personal Odyssey Writing Workshop, an intensive, one-on-one online workshop, customized for you.