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A Novel First Draft in 70 Days (10
weeks)
This is an advanced workshop in actually writing your novel. No exercises, no lectures, no homework, nothing but writing, writing, writing until you have finished a full first draft of your novel. For most writers this is the hump. If you can get over this, the rest is relatively easy. It is the impetus generated by finishing a first draft that propels the average novelist through the subsequent drafts and revisions with far greater momentum and confidence than he had writing the first draft.
This course's only goal is to get you writing, keep you writing and help you get that first draft out of your head and onto paper in seventy days.
For those of you need a structured schedule, someone keeping you writing, milestones, due dates and someone you can turn to advise you, coach you and bug you or be there at the very moment you encounter a problem -- this is your course. It is strong in work, light in theory or technique except where it directly applies to problems, obstacles or
needs specific to a scene or character unique to your novel.
You will not be uploading any of your manuscript for review or critique. Instead, the classroom will be the writer's lounge for help, guidance and advice. See it as a room full of writer's all working on a first draft with an instructor in the work moving from writer to writer to nudge, push, motivate you but also to help you. The online classroom will be where we check progress, raise questions, address problems encountered and share successes as well as seek support from the entire group when things are not going well.
See the course as a cross between a writer's retreat and Boot Camp. Like a writer's retreat the objective is to get writing done. Unlike a writer's retreat the instructor will set the pace for you and hold you to due dates for the completion of your novel's draft.
This course is ten weeks long. You can expect to be pushed very hard to write a lot and write fast. There will be no time allotted to revisions, editing, rewriting, backing up, restarting, waffling, second guessing, writer's block, days off or indecision. You will be expected to turn out seven pages (1500 words) of new manuscript every day, seven days a week for ten weeks. And you must be able to check in to the class site four times a week to submit progress reports and help one another keep on track and provide mutual moral support. This means you must be able to devote a minimum of four hours a day to your writing. If you can't commit to that, this is not your course.
But if you feel that this course is for you, you need to have taken Intro to Fiction and one novel writing prep course out of the way as a prerequisite or get permission of the instructor.
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A Plotting Workshop (8
weeks)
Most new novelists who find themselves having difficulty completing their novel failed to put together a solid plan before jumping into the writing. Without a good plot a novel loses steam and comes to a halt after the first hundred pages. This workshop is focused on helping the aspiring novelist prepare a workable plot that produces a compelling story. This is done by defining the essential elements of the novel and the critical scenes which must be written. Students will walk through the process of identifying these components for their novels and organizing them into a functional plot outline. This is not a critiquing course or workshop. Students will not be uploading portions from their manuscripts, nor will the plot outline be completed during the class. Rather, this class will lead you through the steps necessary to develop a solid plot, the foundation for your novel.
Either Writing the First Novel or A Novel First Draft in 70 Days must be taken before this class. If you have taken a different, but similar, class in writing fiction, write to us with the details.
Course Outline:
Week 1 - Determine the progress made by each student on their respective novels. Intro and emphasize the importance of the concept of a plan of work for the novel. Create the necessary working documents for the novel -- Manuscript, Prelim Outline, ToDo list, Cast List and Decisions List. Set a very modest work schedule.
Week 2 - Discuss and define protagonist, antagonist and the story problem/goal. Discuss the difference between need and want for the protagonist. Discuss the importance of worthy antagonist -- define him/it. Refine outline format selection.
Week 3 - Discuss what a novel's story is and define each student's story in a simple statement. Get back to bare bones and throw out fluff to get to the core of the story.
Week 4 - Refine and distill story statements. Review outline problems and suggest options with examples. Discuss the structure of the basic contemporary novel -- mystery and suspense, and the obligation of the novelist to entertain and provide escape for the reader.
Week 5 - From Week 4, create the dramatic questions and refine them to something translatable to working scenes. Discuss and demonstrate converting the outline to a Sequential Table of Contents or "As Built."
Week 6 - Review the scene concept. From the dramatic question determine the options for the climax.
Week 7 - Review concept of story hook, baseline intensity, inciting incident, progressive complication, climax and resolution and begin to rough each out. Discuss and consider time frame options. Discuss and consider Point of Attack and first paragraphs options. Draft each.
Week 8 - Summarize progress. Open the class for loose end discussions. Set final work plan and goals for outline completion and how to integrate drafting of new material.
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Mastering the Scene: For Fiction Writers (10 weeks)
If you want to be a good baseball player you need to practice batting. Writing fiction is not much different -- it takes practice. And, like every other field of endeavor, there is a basic skill at the heart of success. For the fiction writer that is the ability to write the scene well.
The scene is the very basic components of the short story and the novel. Failure to master its most minimum requirements of design, composition, intensity and construction will ultimately be the cause of failure of a completed story. No great idea, no wonderful story concept, no terrific plot, no unique angle on a story will overcome a writer's lack of adequate skills in writing scenes.
This course is primarily a workshop. Students will submit scenes for classmates and the instructor to comment on and offer feedback to regarding the scenes' effectiveness, construction, and impact on the reader.
Unlike the "Critical Scenes Workshop," students enrolled in this course need not be pulling the scenes from a planned, plotted, or drafted story or novel manuscript. The scenes submitted can be completely random, unrelated, dissimilar and written in totally different forms, points of view, tenses or perspectives. The goal of the course is to sharpen scene writing skills.
This course is for the writer who wants to write fiction and needs some help with scene writing skills as well as the writer who has a story in mind and wants to audition some fragments of the story in the form of sample scenes. It is an opportunity to do some pre-writing before launching into a project in earnest.
There are no prerequisites for this course.
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A Critical Scenes Workshop for the Novelist (10 weeks)
Each novel stands or fails on many things, but one essential element all novels have in common is that they have anywhere from three to ten very critical scenes. They are the foundation of the skeleton of the novel. They make up the large load-bearing bones of the story. If done well, they carry the novel to success. If done poorly -- disaster!
A large number of aspiring novelists are afraid of these scenes and either don't think they have done a good job with them or avoid writing them all together. Still others are scared by some types of scenes -- scenes heavy on violence, argument, sex or complex action. Too many of these writers hope they can get by with beautiful prose and a large helping of stream-of-consciousness writing or static description alone. They dodge the tough scenes and do a poor job on the critical scenes they do write. A course where they can offer their drafts, ask for input and take suggestions from other writers and the instructor can lead to great improvements in the scenes that make the difference.
PREREQUISITE: Completion of Writing the First Novel, A Plotting Workshop, or permission from the instructor. The student should have the first draft of a novel complete.
COURSE OBJECTIVE: To provide an opportunity to expose a draft novel's most critical scenes to advanced scrutiny, critique and group review for improvement. The discussions and recommendations generated in the course offer options and instill confidence in the writer.
COURSE CONDUCT: Each student will participate in the 10-week workshop by alternately submitting scenes for classmate and instructor response and responding to the scenes uploaded by classmates. Each student will identify the most critical scenes in his or her novel manuscript and upload one scene at a time along with questions of concern regarding the uploaded scene. The other students and the instructor will first focus on the questions submitted -- making an effort to offer candid and constructive replies to help resolve problems identified or suspected by the author. Additionally, each student and the instructor will add his or her own suggestions for improvement. Student's are required to check in on-line twice each week -- there are no real-time conferences or chats.
The workshop portion of the course will be augmented by short (written/uploaded) instructor lectures specific to advanced techniques of scene design, composition, goals and writing methods.
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