Writing the Sentence Workshop for Summer 2025
Teacher: Odelia Chan
Email: teach@odeliachan.com
"Call me Ishmael." "Where ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly to be wise." "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity."
Some sentences strike us psychologically, spark ideas and emotions in our hearts, or stay in our minds long after we've finished reading them.
What makes them special?
Taking notes from How to Write a Sentence: And How to Read One (Stanley Fish), The Elements of Style (William Strunk Jr.), literature, the world of advertising and copywriting, and artificial intelligence (ChatGPT and GPT-4), we'd explore how a sentence is formed, how it communicates an idea, and how you can create sentences worth reading.
Each week of this 3-week workshop contains four daily in-depth lessons on the topics below, each with their own required response assignment that helps you read, understand, analyze, and engage with sentences past and present. Each Friday is dedicated to crafting a thorough, thoughtful project to reflect what's been learned during the week. (The best part of the course! We'd get to examine movies, novels, poems, and even GPT-3 produced content.)
Week 1:
- Why sentences?
- What a sentence IS (and what it is not)
- The relationship between words
- Which is more important—thought or form?
Week 2:
- How to write a sentence (A brief overview of styles)
- The subordinating style
- The additive style
- Satirical styles: The return of content
Week 3:
- First sentences
- When bots can write, what makes your words human?
- To sell is human: The architecture of marketing through words
- Last sentences
Materials:
All lessons, assignments, and project details will be provided via email.
Class Delivery:
The course is delivered via email to each individual student each day of the course; feedback and responses to the submitted assignments are sent to the student as replies to their emailed work. There are NO SET CLASS TIMES or live Zoom meetings - the student only needs to complete the daily assignments within 24 hours of receiving the lesson and instructions, which makes this course flexible and easy to fit around busy summer schedules.
Cost:
$195 per student, per workshop.
Who this class is for:
Artists, writers, would-be authors and anyone who loves and/or works with words.
Instructor:
I'm Odelia - a freelance copywriter, AP Literature and Composition teacher, and published novelist. I share my thoughts sporadically with the internet on my blog, where I explore the soul, mind, and environment of the creator. I also run a weekly newsletter on Substack, Percolations.
How to register:
To register, submit payment for the correct workshop via the AP Homeschoolers website store. Once registered, you'd receive the workshop emails in your inbox starting the day of the workshop section chosen.
NOTE: If you have a busy summer but am still interested in the course, this workshop is also offered here: Writing The Sentence. (If needed, you can access the refund policy for summer workshops here: http://www.aphomeschoolers.com/refunds.shtml)
These are the offered dates in 2025 - again, this is an asynchronous course delivered via email, and has no required live or scheduled class times: