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The Cultural Forces platform has launched a free educational course for military authors (OKDVA). The project was launched with the support of the Ukrainian Cultural Foundation as part of the ‘Culture During War’ competition programme. Here we provide more details about the lecturer and the course content.
The project was developed by Vladyslav Lentsov, a serving soldier and member of the Cultural Forces platform, known as Vlad Storyteller. Under this pseudonym, he runs a blog dedicated to the art of storytelling. As the author notes, military personnel and veterans often face difficulties when preparing and publishing their own books.
“This course isn’t just for military personnel — it will be of interest to anyone who wants to start writing fiction or learn how to do so professionally,” said Vlad Storyteller. According to him, the course will be useful to anyone wishing to try their hand at fiction or develop their writing skills.
The course covers the key tools of creative writing: from developing the plot and characters to ways of engaging the reader, maintaining suspense in the story and creating fictional worlds. Participants will also be introduced to the following approaches and concepts:
In addition, participants will learn more about the ethical use of AI, text editing, collaborating with publishers, and so on. Video lectures are published twice a week on the Cultural Forces Education YouTube channel, accompanied by workbooks containing notes and tasks for self-study. A total of 20 video lessons are planned — the final two will be released between 19 and 23 October.
