Welcome
Welcome to Novel Writing Fundamentals
with Emily Maguire
Whether you are already a writer of fiction or you’re completely new to the craft, this course is designed to be an encouraging and practical guide to the fundamentals of writing a novel.
This workshop comprises four modules that will take three to four hours to complete and which can be worked through at your own convenience.
The most important thing to remember as you move through the modules is that, when it comes to writing fiction, there are no rules.
What you’ll find in this course instead of rules is a range of tools and techniques that we all have available to us as writers and discussion about when and how to use them.
Understanding how various tools and techniques can be applied will help you to make the right choices as you move forward with your novel. And this is important because writing a novel is all about making choices.
From what name to give your protagonist to what tense to use; from where to set the main action to whether the narrative will be in 1st or 3rd-person POV; from how much attention to give your supporting characters to how much dialogue any given scene should have; to — well, a thousand other choices big and small. It really is choice-by-choice as much as word-by-word that your novel will be written.
As well as helping you to understand the fundamentals so you can feel confident in making all of those choices, this course aims to get you writing immediately. Every exercise is designed as both a fun way to practise a particular concept or technique and as a prompt for you to do the one thing that is compulsory if you want to write a novel: get words on the page.
So let’s go!