Fuel your passion for storytelling with 16 free online courses from MIT
By Sara Feijo
Are you looking to elevate your writing skills, master the art of persuasion, or are you seeking inspiration as you embark on a writing journey? Here are 16 free online courses from MIT Open Learning to help guide you through every stage of the writing process — whether you’re penning a novel, polishing essays, or simply want to dive into writing genres.
Explore creative writing
- Writing Science Fiction: Write and read science fiction, a genre that transforms the science of today with the technology of tomorrow.
- Genre Fiction Workshop: Fantasy: Step into the world of fantasy, one of the most popular genres in fiction.
- Writing and Reading Short Stories: Get an introduction to short stories, by reading famous examples, learning how to outline descriptive sketches, and writing narratives.
- Writing and Reading Poems: Try your hand at crafting and analyzing poetry.
- Playwriting I: Get an introduction to the craft of writing for the theater.
- Global Shakespeares: Re-Creating the Merchant of Venice: Learn how performance of William Shakespeare’s “The Merchant of Venice” provides occasions for creative, thoughtful communication across personal, historical, and cultural boundaries.
Venture into nonfiction formats
- Writing and Reading the Essay: Discover the literary genre of the essay, a popular form that attracts nonfiction and fiction writers, poets, scientists, physicians, and others.
- Writing and Experience: Reading and Writing Autobiography: Master the art of self-narrative and autobiographical writing.
- Composing your Life: Exploration of Self through Visual Arts and Writing: Equip yourself with visual and written tools for self exploration and self expression.
- Writing about Race: Narratives of Multiraciality: Explore multiraciality in essays, novels, memoirs, and more.
Discover the art of persuasive writing
- Rhetoric: Examine the theory, practice, and implications of rhetoric and rhetorical criticism.
- Writing and Rhetoric: Designing Meaning: Study rhetoric systematically and empirically, analyzing how it works on readers and testing how to make informed choices when designing your own texts.
- Writing and Rhetoric: Writing about Sports: In this introductory writing course, consider the role of sports in your own life and explore the cultural meanings of sports in America.
Dive into scientific and technical writing
- Communicating Science to the Public: Explore the ins and outs of writing about science, including medicine, technology, and engineering.
- Writing and the Environment: Understand how environmentalists share their knowledge in engaging and accessible language.
- Graduate Technical Writing Workshop: Improve your ability to communicate technical information, from working with sources, to writing an abstract, to conducting a literature review.
These courses are available through MIT OpenCourseWare and MITx, which are part of MIT Open Learning. OpenCourseWare offers free, online, open educational resources from more than 2,500 courses that span the MIT undergraduate and graduate curriculum. MITx offers high-quality massive open online courses adapted from the MIT classroom for learners worldwide.
Fuel your passion for storytelling with 16 free online courses from MIT was originally published in MIT Open Learning on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.