Unlock your storytelling potential with The Rhetoric of Story, a course designed for writers of all levels. Learn the foundations of great storytelling!
The Rhetoric of Story is an engaging writing course for anyone eager to master the art of storytelling. With a fun approach to learning, you'll explore the core techniques that every great story relies on!
Essential writing skills for creative and professional writers.
THE FASTEST ENROLLING WRITING COURSE ON UDEMY. 1000+ STUDENTS IN 24 HOURS.
A Udemy "Top Course" in Writing.
Selected as "New & Noteworthy" in Creativity.
College level instruction, based on 10 years of teaching and research, now available on Udemy
"Damien speaks with great clarity about a subject he really understands. His delivery is great. The ideas he delivers are fascinating." Rod Duncan, author of The Bullet Catcher's Daughter.
We live in a Golden Age of story. From blockbuster cinema and bestselling novels like Harry Potter & Hunger Games, to HBO television shows like Game of Thrones and American Gods, great storytelling is loved by billions of people worldwide. Writers who can tell great stories make huge fortunes.
Great storytelling can be learned.
The writers and creators of Star Wars, Breaking Bad or Mass Effect aren't just making things up. Today's most loved stories draw on thousands of years of storytelling techniques, from Aristotle's Catharsis, to the Monomyth of Joseph Campbell, and the Dramatica model used by many of today's highest paid screenwriters.
Based on over a decade of research, and bringing together ideas from today's most successful storytellers and story theorists, The Rhetoric of Story is an essential course for all creative writers, screenwriters and novelists.
The seven foundations of powerful storytelling.
Stories are powerful. Just a few words on a page, or some flickering images on a screen, and for a handful of moments, minutes, or hours we can believe we are another person, living another life, in another world. How do stories have such a powerful, immersive effect?
Just seven core techniques provide the foundation for every great story every told. Together these seven foundations form a "rhetoric of story", that can be used to tell a powerful, immersive story in any medium, from a 5 page short story, to a 10 hour television series.
A scientific insight into story.
Stories are more than just entertainment. As psychology and neuroscience reveal the inner workings of the mind, we're learning how great stories appeal to the deepest drives of the human psyche. The Rhetoric of Story draws on the psychological insights of Freud and Jung, and leading scientific research, to reveal the 7 foundations of powerful storytelling.
Unleashing the power of story for all.
The poet and novelist Maya Angelou said, "There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you." The Rhetoric of Story provides a simple, flexible toolkit to tell any story. Apply the seven foundations to your writing and produce powerful stories that audiences fall in love with.
College grade teaching at internet prices.
The Rhetoric of Story is based on courses taught at under-graduate and post-graduate college level, to students paying thousands of dollars in fees. it makes that knowledge accessible for all, at incredible value.
The 7 foundations of great storytelling, in one easy to follow course.
Ideas you will learn in The Rhetoric of Story:
Why no story can be great without a profound INTERNAL change.
A psychological insight into self, the engine of story.
The key to creating truly human characters: the web of relationship.
Conflict, why it must be present, and the 3 levels it must cross.
The "fractal" pattern of events; stories within stories.
Why it's OK to steal story structure...in fact it should be compulsory.
How to harness the secret super power of story: Emotion.
Who is this course for?
Anyone who wants to write a book, short story or screenplay and wants to learn the 7 foundations of telling a compelling story.
Writers who have many stories under their belt, but struggle to find an audience for their work.
Creative professionals - journalists, copywriters, bloggers, marketers and more who want to utilise powerful storytelling.
Experts, influencers and business executives who want to harness the power of story in their careers.
The 7 foundations of powerful storytelling.
A scientific insight into story drawing on psychology and neuroscience.
How to tell powerful stories as novels, screenplays and more.
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Damien Walter ( BA / MA / PGCHE / HEA) teaches good writers how to be great. His research and critical writing have been published in The Guardian, Wired, BBC, The Independent, Aeon and with Oxford University Press. He is a former director of creative writing at the University of Leicester, a member of the Higher Education Academy, and a...
Well-structured lectures. Very good choice of examples. I like that the lectures were recorded out in nature. Makes it more pleasant to listen to.
The concept of outer/inner change, for a story to be impactful, was important to stress. I appreciated that. Thank you!
Lovely stories but most of listener may not be really inspired by all these good old stories. I think instructor tried too much to narrate everything. A shorter versions of these stories that lead to key ideas may help.
Interesting, good to listen to only better to also have a written summary
The course has been really helpful to me and I congratulate Damien Walter for laying out the basics of story writing so clearly for a layperson like me. It was enjoyable and a good learning experience.
Yes, there was noise in the background sometimes and maybe some repetitions... but as a person aspiring to write, I think perfection is not a part of our life stories. These little glitches make life more enjoyable and make learners more mindful of the task ahead. Thanks Damien for a lovely experience.
This course is downright comical. This instructor talks more and says less than anyone on the planet. About half the lectures are pretty much useless because he babbles on and on about abstract theory and gives you NOTHING practical to use. Half of his lectures is him repeating himself over and over and over and the rest of the lecture is common knowledge. Lecture 5 is a good example. He starts off talking about "archetypes." He mentions the word "archetype" about 900 times but at no point does he explain it or define it. Finally at the end of the lecture he suggests if you want to learn about archetypes to look it up. Seriously? And when he does bring up examples to illustrate what he is babbling about, he spends way too much time describing that example. He takes up most of one lecture repeating the plotline of "Silence of the Lambs" and that could be accomplished in about 3 minutes.
I am sure this instructor knows a good deal about the subject but unfortunately he is one of those people who is unable to effectively pass on that knowledge. In most of he lectures, he is talking off the top of his head, disorganized, random thoughts that go in different directions and then circle back. He is disorganized, so I don't think he recalls what he has said and when he has said it. Thus, the repetition.
I will archive this course and maybe go back to it. Also, I was unable to find any writing credits to Mr. Walter's name. I could not even find references to any magazine articles, much less real publishing like novels or screenplays. Is he unpublished?
Good learning. Thank you.
I should have taken off .1 of a point for not quite nailing the first Rocky movie but then the instructor has probably not watched the first 3 or 4 Rocky movies 30 times each as I have. It was helpful to me to think about the two story ideas I have while listening to the breakdown of what makes a good and lasting story. This is inspiring to me to continue to try to develop my story ideas.
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It is excellent, in terms of content, pedagogy and structure. The sound isn't always good, but that's a forgivable flaw given the quality of the course.
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Robert P.
did not like how the presenter presented the course material using the outside