To challenge resistance to required literature courses, instructors quiz students regularly on the readings; they also require examinations that ask students to define key terms, to answer background questions focused on authors and dates, to identify key passages by author/title/speaker, and to explain the thematic significance of each quotation. Additionally, most instructors require at least one out-of-class essay and/or a research paper to engage students in critical thinking on the readings. Such strategies hardly guarantee that students will become enthusiastic about the material, but they do encourage students to complete the readings and to retain the information--at least until the essays and examinations end. Literature professors should not settle for just requiring students to write essays; instead, they should prepare their students to write those essays by helping them to internalize the literature via prewriting strategies and by coaching their efforts at revision. The author describes his efforts to use writing-centered strategies to engage initially reluctant students in his survey course entitled "English Literature Before 1800". Having taught this course countless times in traditional classrooms, using the same strategies the author describes the use of discussion boards, journaling, multi-drafting--author descriptions, and how they focus exclusively on an online section of this course.