High School Writing Curriculum Review: One Year Adventure Novel

Hi there!

As the title suggests, this will be my personal review of the Christian-run One Year Adventure Novel (OYAN) writing curriculum, which is supported by Clear Water Press and Daniel Schwabauer or "Mr. S." who as far as I know is the head of CWP.

OYAN to me is a very happy word and I could ramble all day about the pros of it. However, today I am going to try to take a step back and take a (mostly) unbiased look at what I consider both the pros and cons of the curriculum based upon my own experience as a student using it.

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A brief summary of the curriculum:

The OYAN curriculum is laid out to take approximately one school year (hence its name) and is divided into two sections across the typical high school semester.

The first half is laid out into daily lessons, consisting of the following:

1. A short video lesson by Mr. S.

2. A reading lesson in "The Compass"

3. Filling out worksheets in "The Map"

4. Additional reading on occasion from Anthony Hope's novel, "The Prisoner of Zenda". This additional reading will usually be brought in the next video lesson and used to illustrate part of the writing process.

The second half of the semester is spent writing your novel with the guidelines provided from the work you will have completed in "The Compass" by this stage.

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Pros of OYAN:

There is a Student Forum, which provides you, the student, with 24/7 access to a very awesome group of other young writers who can and will give much of the following:

1. They can give critiques from the reader's P.O.V. which will help you improve your novel

2. Writing advice from their own experience

3. Developing the characters for your novel

4. Just being there to provide support and encouragement when needed.

The Student Forum also provides you with access to the following very helpful and kind people:

1. Non-24-hr access to both Mr. S. and his wife, Mrs. S.

2. Almost 24-hr access to at least one member of the CWP Admin

3. Almost 24-hr access to the Mentors. (These are usually students who have passed the 20yo age limit on the Student Forum, but been allowed back for a while to help the Admin with the younger students. They don't bite.)

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The way the OYAN curriculum asks the student to really plan out their novel before they ever start writing is really helpful.

In truth, having an under-planned novel can be a fatal mistake for a beginning writer. Having the outline created in the "Compass" handy when fighting writer's block or just being plain stuck on coming up on what should happen next in your novel can be a lifesaver.

In fact, it can help you figure out whether or not your current idea for a novel is really the one you are going to enjoy writing or even the one that you are going to be able to write. (I speak from experience here, it saved me from trying to force myself to write a novel that was about as interesting to me as Limburger cheese.)

There is a Novel Contest: Every year, OYAN staff hold a contest for the students under 19 to enter their finished novels into, complete with the judges' critiques and a monetary prize for the top three placers, and a custom pen for the finalists.

This can provide a great motivation for you to get your rough draft completed and edited and can also be a lot of fun.

There is a yearly Summer Workshop: Held in Olathe, Kansas, from June 8-13, this is a gathering of OYAN students from all over the U.S. and Canada, where they can meet friends from the Student Forum face to face, meet Mr and Mrs. S. face to face, listen to different speakers talk about their own experiences writing, have live Critique Groups, and just get to geek out over everything writer-y for a whole week. Attending is highly recommended by a majority of past attendees and I shall be attending for the first time this year. It is online for the first time, due to COVID-19, but there's always 2021 and following years for the in-person experience.

Cons of OYAN:

You definitely have to have some semblance of sticktoitness to get through the first part of this curriculum.

The lessons in the first half of the semester didn't take me that long to complete every day; about 30 minutes to an hour, depending on how long I chose to spend working on the "Map", but I am a speed-reader. The reading lessons and worksheets could take a slow reader much longer than that to complete, which may not be ideal in the typical high-school workday.

If you don't enjoy working with boundaries, then you probably won't enjoy this.

The OYAN curricumlum lays out the guidelines for you to follow from A to Z and for a beginning writer, this can be very helpful, for it narrows the area you have to work in and forces you to focus upon each individual part of your project. It is similar to all the planning professional writers have to do before they start writing, but as I said in the point above this one, it definitely takes time to do and may not be for you if you like something a bit more free.

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Well, I just ran out of points to make, so I hope you were able to start pondering becoming an OYANer yourself! And if you are already? -glomps- Congrats! Please come talk to me on the Forum. :D

Here is a link to the OYAN webpage. I have already provided the link to Clear Water Press in the start of this review, but I will paste it here in case you don't want to scroll all the way back up there. :)

OYAN: https://clearwaterpress.com/oneyearnovel/

CWP: https://clearwaterpress.com

Brooke Johnson