As soon as I saw Neil Gaiman was offering lectures at Masterclass.com, I jumped at the opportunity. Gaiman is one of my absolute favorite writers, so even though I doubted the lectures would contain some mind-blowing new information, I figured it would be nice to get an insight into his writing process at least.
I’m about two thirds through the class, which, I think, makes me about ready to pass judgement.
The class was of to a good start. There’s a work book accompanying the lectures.
Now, the book doesn’t add much depth to the individual lectures, but it does have exercises to each lecture/subject. Though, far from all of them seemed useful to me, the writing exercises were a big plus in my book. They allow you to use the class for deliberate practice, increasing the chance that one will actually improve from taking the class greatly.
That being said, the content of the lectures themselves were just “okay”. There’s nothing there which I consider to be ill advice and Gaiman, usurprisingly, really seem to know what he’s talking about. But there’s nothing really new or extraordinary about his advice or approach to writing. Exactly as expected.
The problem is, what works, works. There’s only so many ways you can explain “show, don’t tell” or “use the different senses in your descriptions” or “finish you stories”, etc. Though, there were specific areas of some of the subjects where Gaiman’s insights made me go “huh, I should try that”, and I guess most writers will have a few of these moments throughout the class and not necessarily at the same places as me.
So, yeah, the exercises in the notebook and the insight into how a master like Gaiman views the components of writing were nice, but the advice wasn’t exactly mind-blowing. If you have the money to spare and if you’re relatively new to writing, I think Neil Gaiman’s masterclass course could definitely be worth it. It’s one of the better writing classes I’ve tried. However, there are a lot of free information out there on the web, and combined with a good writing book or two, I think you can learn just as much in the same time spending far less money.
Toby Backman 