ten bad pages The craft of writing. Obtained via strikethrough.

For students in an intro creative writing course

For the Classroom

For the student taking Creative Writing right now. Not another professor and not a textbook: the senior who already took the class and still has their notes.

Your professor just told you your scene lacks tension. Here’s what that means, how to find the problem and what to do before Thursday.

From the classroom

The course, one problem at a time

Intro creative writing courses follow the same arc almost everywhere, from community colleges to big-name programs: read fiction as a writer, work through the elements of craft, write your own, workshop it, revise. We’re building a small, cheap resource for each step, for the night before it’s due. Six are out now, and the rest are on the way.

  1. Read Like a Writer Seeing what a writer is doing on the page, and explaining how it works. Available
  2. Show Me Something Detail and description, and why “show, don’t tell” isn’t a universal rule. Available
  3. Build a Character Who Wants Something Getting a character’s wants onto the page instead of keeping them in your head. Available
  4. Give the Story a Problem Conflict, stakes and tension, and why a scene feels flat even when things happen. Available
  5. What Happens Next Plot and structure: whether one event actually causes the next. Coming
  6. Who’s Telling This? Point of view, voice and distance, and what “head hopping” means. Coming
  7. Put Me Somewhere Setting that matters to the scene instead of interchangeable scenery. Coming
  8. Why Your Dialogue S^%$S: Class Edition Dialogue that overexplains, sounds unnatural or does nothing. Coming
  9. Does This Need to Be a Scene? Scene, summary and pacing: what deserves page time. Coming
  10. Start Late, Leave Early Where the story really begins, and when it has earned an ending. Coming
  11. The Workshop Kit Preparing a submission, critiquing a classmate, and what to do with conflicting feedback. Available
  12. Okay, Now Fix It Turning workshop notes into a revision plan instead of changing sentences at random. Available

AI is already in the classroom

You probably have ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini open next to your draft. Every resource here will show where AI helps and where it defeats the point of the assignment.

The rule: don’t ask AI to write the scene. Ask it what each character appears to want, make it point to evidence in your pages, and make it defend its diagnosis. You still read, judge, reject, decide and write.

Your professor’s AI policy always wins.

Read these tonight

Craft pieces already on the site that map straight onto the course.