Creative Writing
(912 Creating Writing)

This class is for 9-12 th grade. (Will also accept 7th and 8th graders who are interested in learning how to craft a story.)

Our main study for Story Writing is the study of craft, itself. Topics for discussion will include plot, point-of-view, setting, description, conflict, characterization, dialogue, tension, outlining, writing, rewriting and editing. In-class work will include brief writing prompts and exercises as needed. There are no tests.

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Your “A” will be your finished outline (if not a first draft), which for any writer will be a great "A"ccomplishment all its own.

 

Optional book list to be purchased at any time of interest (I will be including snippets of all of these in class):

Save the Cat! Writes a Novel by Jessica Brody
The Writer's Compass by Nancy Ellen Dodd
Story Engineering by Larry Brooks

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I received my BA from Multnomah Bible College in 2004, majoring in Bible/Theology and minoring in Greek, believing I would one day enter into a life of ministry.

 

And I have.

Deuteronomy 6:6-8 has proved to be the greatest ministry of my life. Motherhood, the greatest challenge. My children, the greatest gifts and the greatest opportunity to further the gospel in a dying world.

I believe we are living in a dying world. I believe that Jesus is the Son of God and has existed as a part of the Trinity since before time began.

I believe he lived as a man, died, and rose again. I believe our home is with God, and we are not to cling to what is temporary but to wait patiently
for the day of His appearing. I believe when David said, “Delight yourselves in the Lord; and He will give you the desires of your heart” (Psalm 37:4), that he was thinking only of Him. “One thing I have asked from the LORD, that I shall seek: That I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the LORD and to meditate in His temple” (Psalm 27:4), “For a day in [His] courts is better than a thousand outside” (Psalm 84:10).

I pray each of us adopts this attitude as we reflect upon our own futures and desires, in order that they match up with those of the psalmist, and I believe God has instilled in each one of us his/her portion of individual strengths and talents for His good and perfect use (Matt. 25:14-30).

This year at Vector, I will be teaching the creative writing class—and am absolutely excited for it.  It’s an opportunity, not only to learn how to employ the different techniques of writing (theme, conflict and resolution), but to explore what it is to weave a world together for characters that students will be learning to bring to life. And in so doing, we get a little taste of how God works in our own lives.
 

As characters in His story, we’ve all had a beginning—birthed of His sovereign will, presented to the world, and given milestones and challenges from which He teaches us how to navigate and push forward against our greatest antagonist. So, too, he gives us wills and character arc and a climactic ending. And as a writer, albeit on a much—much, much—smaller scale, we get to do this too, heedful that we must glorify Him through our God given imaginations as much as we do through our lives (Col. 3:23,24).

Praying Vector 2024/25 to be a great and spirit-filled year!