NVL 06 — Start Your Novel and Keep It Going
Summer
Mondays
6:30—9:30 pm
Date(s)
Jun 22—Jul 27
6 weeks
Drop By
Jul 5
2 Units
Fees
$455
Limit
21
Open
Starting a novel is an exciting venture—and one that can soon turn daunting. Unlike the compressed energy of a short story, the world of a novel spools out over a longer time period and is often made up of layered plots and a large cast of characters.
In this course, we will look at the beginnings of novels by a range of writers, from J. M. Coetzee to Alice Sebold, asking of each, “How do these early pages set up the work and keep us reading?” We will also read brief essays and interviews about how writers handle the first important steps of their work—discovering their material, creating characters, finding voice, initiating plot, establishing tension, and much more. In short weekly exercises we will practice working with these elements ourselves to build novel beginnings that are compelling enough to help us go the distance with our draft. Each student will be able to workshop a sample of their novel’s beginning for helpful, encouraging feedback from the group and the instructor, and each student may also elect to schedule a one-on-one conference with the instructor. This course is appropriate for writers in the early stages of their novels as well as anyone who has always wanted to write a novel and is ready to get started.
In this course, we will look at the beginnings of novels by a range of writers, from J. M. Coetzee to Alice Sebold, asking of each, “How do these early pages set up the work and keep us reading?” We will also read brief essays and interviews about how writers handle the first important steps of their work—discovering their material, creating characters, finding voice, initiating plot, establishing tension, and much more. In short weekly exercises we will practice working with these elements ourselves to build novel beginnings that are compelling enough to help us go the distance with our draft. Each student will be able to workshop a sample of their novel’s beginning for helpful, encouraging feedback from the group and the instructor, and each student may also elect to schedule a one-on-one conference with the instructor. This course is appropriate for writers in the early stages of their novels as well as anyone who has always wanted to write a novel and is ready to get started.
Angela Pneuman, Former Stegner Fellow, Stanford
Angela Pneuman is the author of the novel Lay It on My Heart and the short story collection Home Remedies. Her fiction has appeared in Best American Short Stories, The Believer, Ploughshares, and The Los Angeles Review. She is also a contributor to Salon. Pneuman received a PhD in writing from SUNY Albany.Textbooks for this course:
(Required) Donald Maass, Writing the Breakout Novel (ISBN 158297182X)