#1 New York Times bestselling author Rebecca Ross unveils her personal method for developing the symbiotic relationship between fantasy worlds and the characters who navigate them.

In Magical Echoes: Worldbuilding That Supports Character Arc, Rebecca shares her process for building unique worlds that enrich, inform, and fulfill the protagonist’s journey. Students will investigate inner maps, study worldbuilding elements that pique the reader’s interest and inform the quest. They will also take a deep dive into magic and magic systems, and create folklore that echoes the character’s arc. Using her novels as case studies, Rebecca shares the frameworks and tools she uses to craft bestselling fantasies.

Award winning author Zoraida Córdova guides students through the different entry points of science fiction and fantasy worlds in Fantasy Gateways: Approaches to Magical Worldbuilding.

Drawing from her extensive experience, Zoraida Córdova walks students through her worldbuilding process, including character, setting, and magic system development. Presenting her own works as case studies, Córdova shows students how to bridge the fantastic to reality through research and cultural analogs. Students will join Córdova as they map a hero’s quest using her preferred story beats, research checklist, and worldbuilding questions. This course applies to all writing genres, expanding beyond novels into screenplays, comics, video games, and more.

The Dark Fantastic: Crafting Unputdownable Fantasy explores how techniques deployed by mystery and thriller, the Gothic, and horror can be used to build suspenseful, atmospheric, and thrilling fantasy. Isabel Cañas breaks down how mysteries and thrillers use pacing, foreshadowing, and red herrings to manipulate reader expectations and create tension and suspense.

Students will learn techniques employed by the Gothic to enrich their settings thematically, deepen atmosphere, and embrace the subversive. Finally, students will study how character is the beating heart of horror and will learn concrete methods for bringing emotion to life on the page in vivid, fresh ways. Throughout the course, Isabel draws on her critically-acclaimed, bestselling novels to demonstrate how stealing the best of what darker genres have to offer can only strengthen your own work, regardless of genre.