Description
Are you looking to begin writing a novel, but feeling uncertain about how and where to start?
If you’ve already begun writing a novel, are you finding the process to be more-than-occasionally bewildering and/or overwhelming?
If so, then Novel Foundations is for you!
In this five-session course, you’ll explore a series of important foundational elements of novel-writing—and you’ll actively apply these elements on the page. Every class session will feature a combination of discussion, lively examples of contemporary published fiction, and an interactive set of writing exercises designed to give you practice with helpful techniques and to get you generating pages of your novel.
Some contemporary novelists we may look at: Asali Solomon, Anne Ursu, Claire Luchette, David Heska Wanbli Weiden, Nancy Johnson, Darcie Little Badger, Marie-Helene Bertino, Crystal Hana Kim, Vauhini Vara, Luis Alberto Urrea, Russell Hoban.
The goal is for you to walk out of this class feeling that you’re standing on a solid foundation—loaded up with a wealth of ideas, approaches, and freshly written passages that you can immediately put to use in your novel project.
Schedule:
Week One: We’ll explore a handful of planning and “anti-planning” strategies, and take a close look at how certain novel openings work.
Week Two: We’ll examine two of the most foundational moves in fiction: scene and summary. Then we’ll take a crack at dialogue.
Week Three: We’ll discuss plot and shape, and then character and desire—forces that can be used to make fiction move.
Week Four: We’ll work through a series of generative concepts—techniques to help you keep making meaningful pages throughout the entirety of a novel.
Week Five: In our last class, you’ll have the opportunity to share first pages, after which we’ll have a frank conversation about next steps.
We are able to offer a limited amount of both 50% scholarships for our multi-week classes and 100% scholarships for our single-session classes on a first-come, first-serve basis. Students may receive one scholarship per term. Click here to apply for a scholarship spot.
