1: Finding your voice and picking a worthy idea
Where do your ideas come from? How do you pick a good idea for your novel? How do you know which ideas are worth your time? We’ll go through how to separate good ideas from boring ideas.
2: Who is your audience?
Who are you writing for? Do you want to write a novel that young children will enjoy, or do you prefer to appeal to a bored housewife? Will your target reader be a lawyer living in the city or a university student? How will you appeal to your ideal reader?
3: What genre are you writing in?
Do you know what genre, (if any) your story falls into? Do you understand the rules and expectations of each genre? We will go through the broad genres such as romance, sci-fi, thrillers, horror, and also sub-genres and crossovers.
4: Planning your Story – Choosing Your Protagonist and Creating Compelling Characters
How do you create characters that are unforgettable? How do you create characters that your readers can relate with? Who is the protagonist in your story? Who is the antagonist? How do they change as the story progresses? What are the motives of your main characters?
5: Planning your Story – Choosing a point of view
Who is your narrator? Whose point of view should the reader see? Are you writing in first person, or third person? Are you writing with multiple points of view? When and how do you switch between them?
6: Planning your Story – Plot and Conflicts
Now you’ve created your characters, and you know which point of view we’re writing from, you need to have a plot and lots of conflicts for them to solve. How do you weave a compelling script that keeps your readers hooked?
7: Writing your Story – Outlines and Synopsis
Writing your synopsis will give you an overview of the whole story from beginning to end. Then you need to break it down into chapters, and that’s where your outline comes in. We’ll go through the need for a comprehensive outline and how it is very important for completing that first draft.
8: Writing the story – Research
Why you should conduct research to make your story more credible. This week we’ll be working on the key aspects of your story that creates a believable world, and moves the story forward. How to weave your research into your story so that it adds to the richness of the plot and does not distract the reader.
9: Writing the story – Descriptions, Narration and Dialogue
Now, we’re in the middle of writing the story. How do you balance out the elements of description, narration and dialogue? You don’t want your reader having to wade through pages of description before any action happens, and you don’t want to overwhelm your story with too much narration either. How to write descriptions that create a vivid picture in your reader’s mind, how to write dialogue that engages the reader and is true to the character.
10: Writing the story – Adding Suspense
How do you keep the reader hooked? How do you make the reader keep turning the pages of your book, wanting to know what happens next? Find out…
11: Writing the story – Busting writer’s block and concluding your story
Everyone deals with creative blocks from time to time. We’ll go through some tips for removing blocks and overcoming the fear of the blank page. And what to do to keep pushing until you type “The End”.
12: Editing, Getting Published and Next Steps
Congratulations! Now you’ve finished writing your first draft. What do you do next? We’ll go through the necessary next steps that includes a lot of crossing out and editing, then how you can start preparing your work for publication.
Bonus Lesson: Feedback and Word Count Target – Using all the tips and techniques from the previous week, try to add at least 5000 words to your manuscript.
