Bravo Fleet
One of my long-term projects continues to be expanding Bravo Fleet Academy’s office to the original six planned programs, and as of today I am happy to announce that the third program is now ready for enrollment, the Fiction Writing Program. The goal of this program is to help members get acquainted with the Bravo Fleet Fiction Rubric (which is the standard rubric for writing competitions) by digging deeply into each of its six competencies and then responding to one of three prompts, with a chance to get feedback on their writing.
This is a much longer and more involved module than the previous two, and I anticipate it taking several hours to complete in terms of reading (and watching) the content, and responding to several reflection prompts along the way. The actual writing will (and should) take a bit of time as well. Rather than a breezy 20 minutes, I’m guessing this is more at the level of “substantial weekend project.”
This is also the first of the courses that has requirements beyond assignments within Moodle, as to get the badge (a lovely yellow triangle!), you’ll need to:
- Complete each of the six reflection prompts in the module.
- Respond in between 500 and 2000 words to a fiction prompt.
- Earn 20 Service Ribbons after getting through the fifth competency of the rubric
This is because there’s no quiz I can really give you that would test your creative writing abilities. By the time you finish this program, you’ll have written at least 5,000 words (the submission for the prompt can also be posted on your command for ribbons, so it’s not in addition to the 20) and spent a lot of time thinking about your own writing and writing in general.
My IRL profession is a university writing teacher and full-time professional developer, so I’ve tried to strike a balance between too much reading while also leaving enough in for you to get a good experience out of this. What our goal really is here is to help bridge the gap between what the BFSS considers to be good writing and some misconceptions or uncertainties we’ve seen from other members, but this is also not something that’s only going to benefit beginners. No matter how much writing experience you have, I invite you to take a crack at this program.
To enrol(l), visit academy.bravofleet.com. If you have any questions as you proceed, feel free to ask them in #academy-help or to bounce ideas off of each other in #stories.
If you’re curious about what’s on deck after this, it’s going to be a module about setting up and managing your command, both from the perspective of what to write on those pages but also how to plot out larger arcs, how to balance between fleet plots and your own writing, and how to develop an interesting character roster.
Also, if you have experience with Learning Management Systems (like Moodle) and are interested in becoming part of the Academy team, please reach out!