Write your NOVEL in 100 Days Online Course
This is a 3.5 month mentorship with writing coach Sarah Bullen that will prompt, push and hold you to your promise to write your NOVEL.
First up you need to know that I am a huge fan of structure and plotting. I am book editor and literary agent as well as a writing coach so I know that all stories need the architecture to hold them for the length of a full novel. I will want you to give your story into a rough outline, so my first step is to get that down on paper. I have a very tight plotting method we will use.
I know most writers need a few things to make real progress in their writing:
- An experienced mentor to give you the right advice.
- Someone to hold you accountable and make sure you get it done.
- A place to ask experts questions when you get stuck
You are getting these three key elements in this mentorship. I set the targets and deadlines and show you how to move forward and write with clear focus and intent. This is the first step all writers must take down the path to publication. Without your first draft, you cannot progress to the next stage. So the first few weeks (yes weeks) are spent plotting and working out your plot points. Then you write to targets.
In 100 Days you will end up with up to 80,000 words if you do the work as it is laid out in the course. I have been running this course for eight years in various forms and I can honestly say it is just fantastic. It will teach you to write a novel and push you the entire way to your first draft with daily emails, lessons and deadlines.
HOW DOES IT PRACTICALLY WORK?
* Every day for the first month you will be given a short 2 min lesson via email to read, or to watch.
* Each day has exercises that takes you systematically through how to plot your book.
* At key points you will be asked to send some work for feedback and review.
* The lessons will show you how to plot your story, step by step, beginning to end, going over what the story is about, who the characters are, where the story starts, how it reveals itself and how it ends.
* The format of the course will make sure your story is set up right (the beginning hook) and has the dramatic momentum (the middle build) to carry it through to a fulfilling ending.
* You start actually writing after Day 10 and then the course will take you deeper into advanced plotting, storytelling, characters, dialogue, style, theme, genre and writing.
* Each stage of the mentorship has a task and word count targets for you to reach.
* You are part of our closed FB group of writers in various stages of the publishing process where you can get advice, support or a reader
* You block book your own writing time when it suits you, using the prompts that I send you to know how far your writing should be at each point.
This is the course I did in 2008/9 and I wrote my first novel. I was sick of thinking about writing a novel and making false starts for years, so I took a week off work and did this course. By the end, I'd trashed the novel I'd been wheel-spinning on, and had a new idea. A month later I had a very dodgy first draft, which later became A Million Miles from Normal, published by Penguin Random House in 2010. Today I'm working on my 9th novel, and pretty much still using the same techniques Sarah taught me.
So, if you're thinking of doing a writing course, stop thinking about it and do it. I can't imagine you'll regret it. Paige Nick, Million Miles from Normal
“This was a very useful course to do, particularly the early modules that actually got me plotting and writing in two weeks. I had no clue how to even start writing and the clear information that you provided just mapped the way forward.’
Maria Phalime, author of Second Chances and Postmortem: The Doctor who Walked Away - Winner of the Maskew Miller Longman Literature Award in 2013.
