Dec 01, 2019
Fiction 1: Novel Structure
Ran Spring & Fall 2019
E.L. Doctorow once said: “Writing is like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.” But why does it always seem like you end up crashed or lost somewhere in that endless fog of your first draft? Perhaps you’ve done it a few times. The pile of abandoned, unfinished novel manuscripts grows.
This course is here to give you a plan to get to the end. Bring your plot that needs doctoring or a germinating idea-seed and leave with a complete novel outline, woven with all the most important ingredients for successful stories.
Each week, we will take a microscope to a single slice of the grand plot of a novel, looking at what is expected, necessary, and common for that stage across several established story structures. Students will use these lessons to write their own novel outline, week-by-week, step-by-step. They'll continually share their progress for critique, suggestions, and guidance until they have a robust plan for a novel, from the opening scene to the ending. This course is open to students of all experience levels, so long as they're up to the challenge described above.