Product Description

Course Description

Through 78 video lessons, the One Year Adventure Novel guides high school writers (9th – 12th grade) step by step in creating an original, fully-structured adventure novel—in one school year (two semesters).

Your student will:

• Learn the basic elements that make stories fulfilling and meaningful
• Understand the three-act story structure
• Recognize and practice the basic fictional modes
• Complete their own original novel of 15,000–24,000 words.

Course Highlights:

• Taught on video by award-winning author Daniel Schwabauer.
• Includes video lessons, workbook, textbook, teacher’s guide, grading rubrics, live webinars, active student forum, writing workshops and more!
• The course is worth one full high school English credit.
• Cloud-accessed—access the videos by logging into your cloud account. No need for DVDs.

Course Credit

• Course takes approximately 120 hours to complete
• One (1) full english credit as a Creative Writing program.

Overview

Semester one:

• The five elements of story
• Character roles and depth
• Conflict
• Story Structure
• The four defining moments in every story
• The novel outline: 12 chapters and their characteristics

Semester two:

• How to write
• Creating emotion and illusion of reality
• Modes
• Modifiers
• Various techniques of fiction
• Revision

Grading

• Grades based on:
  • 26 weekly quizzes
  • parent/teacher’s evaluation of the lessons in The Map Workbook 
  • student’s rough draft of a novel

• Teacher evaluations are simple rubrics as explained in the Teacher’s Guide.
• Weekly quizzes impact final grade about as much as a single lesson.
• Final draft of novel in second semester has slightly more impact on final grade as the workbook lessons.

Reading

Students read:

• Anthony Hope’s classic adventure novel, The Prisoner of Zenda
• the textbook The Compass.
• Excerpts from a variety of classic adventure novels. All excerpts are printed in the textbook

Contests

At the end of the school year, students can enter their completed novel in our annual Student Novel Contest.

Webinars

Your instructor, Mr. Schwaabauer, runs a series of live webinars offering you coaching on complex topics. You can chat with the instructor during these webinars.

Student Forum

Participation in our closed online Student Forum is optional but encouraged.

How the Lessons Work

There are 78 video-based lessons over a one school year (View the Lessons table). The lessons work as follows:

1. Watch the 15–18-minute video lesson.
2. Read the accompanying lesson in the textbook.
3. Read any assigned readings as directed in the text (some lessons do not have assigned readings).
4. Complete the corresponding brainstorming and outlining questions in the workbook (first semester), or write your chapter draft for the lesson, based on your plans in the workbook (second semester).