Course Description for

Creating History

with Peggy Ullman Bell

Registration Fee and Course Length

Prerequisites

Standard course: $120 / 4 weeks. Click here to register.

Extended schedule: $150 / 8 weeks. Click here to register.
Extended course is designed for busy people and gives you two weeks to do each lesson but contains NO additional material.

No prerequisites.

Course Contacts

Course Description

A place for historical and fantasy novelists to acquire or polish the skills needed for the writing that comes before and between the writing. Upon completion of this course, the student will be able to identify and categorize primary, secondary and third party resources, demonstrate how those differences affect their stories, and explain why each type of resource is necessary for the creation of fictional/fantasy worlds.

Whether a novel is historical, fantasy, sci-fi, or contemporary, the author must live in another time while writing them. It is not enough to feel confident in your story setting. You have to live there. You have to know tiny details like what does your character have for breakfast? What is it prepared in/on? By whom? Your participation in this course will help you learn how to find out.

Week 1: A general discussion of individual backgrounds and goals based upon my philosophy that writers have an obligation toward accuracy of detail.

Homework - {Read posted materials}, then send me your comments plus a self description that includes your personal writing goals, your current project if you have one, your expectations from this course and any questions you might wish to ask.

Week 2: A discussion of the various levels of research materials, with the focus on primary sources, and the use of personal experience in an historical or fantastical setting.

Homework - Read posted materials, choose a setting, create a character to suit that setting, select an action, then submit a brief anecdote showing your character in your hypothetical situation.

Week 3: A discussion of secondary research; he said/she said. Can it be trusted? What do you do when sources disagree?

Homework - Read posted materials. Develop and resubmit previous anecdote as a 3 to 4 page scene (750 to 1000wds)

Week 4: Third hand sources. Discussion of how to use, and not use what others have written about your area of interest.

Homework - Read posted materials, then create a bibliography listing 3 sources for each type of research material. Submit a brief (300 to 500wd) description of how you plan to use each of these resources in forthcoming work.

Peggy Ullman Bell grew up in books. Never living in any single dwelling for longer than three years gave her no time to build lasting friendships. She peopled her world with friends found in books, dozens of books, as many as 12 a week the summer she was 15.

An accomplished poet in her own right, and published in numerous publications including Images, Ms. Bell's debut novel, PSAPPHA, received selected top 10 ratings in the first month following its November 2000 release.

The first polished draft of PSAPPHA, a novel of Sappho, was completed during Ms. Bell's senior year at the University of Tulsa, Class of '77, where she was founding president of the Oklahoma Delta Chapter of Pi Gamma Mu, the National Honor Society for the Social Sciences. When asked why it took so long to get from first draft to final, Ms. Bell smiled and said, "It takes a long time for an ancient culture to become a worthy tourist attraction."

Ms. Bell's second novel, FIXIN' THINGS, February 2002, deals with a young woman's personal and private Battle of Gettysburg.

Though originally from scant miles north of the Mason/Dixon Line and educated as a child in Gettysburg, Bell currently resides near the Jefferson Davis Presidential Library on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. "But, I live in cyberspace," she explains in sultry southern tones. True to her words, in addition to her work here in the Writers College, Ms. Bell is a Community Leader on AOL, co-hosts Novel Ideas Workshop in the the Writing & Publishing area of AOL.com (Keyword:Writers Corner) and is an occasional columnist for NovelAdvice.com