Continuing Your Novel (Online Course)

(EGL 297 W)

NOVEL WRITING: A THREE-PART SERIES

If you want to write a novel but are unsure how to sustain a piece of long fiction, then this three-course series is for you. In the Winter, Katharine Noel, author of the acclaimed novel, Halfway House, will pick up the series with "Continuing Your Novel," designed to get students over the hump and to deepen their awareness of the craft of novel writing. In the Spring, Malena Watrous will return to teach the final course in the series, helping students to visualize an ending and write toward that goal. In all three courses, close readings of published novels, regular deadlines, critical feedback, and short assignments serve as rest stops, refreshing you on the long journey toward your completed novel.

Continuing Your Novel

Whether you've recently started your novel or have been working on it for years, you've experienced the excitement and satisfaction that come when the work is going well. But writing a novel can be daunting, too—not only because of the complexity of the form, but also because the initial inspiration is rarely enough to sustain a project of this length. In this course, we will look together at how to keep moving forward. How can we continue to generate ideas? How do we deepen characters so that they feel alive to readers? And how can we sustain the energy and excitement that made us want to write in the first place? We will read and discuss contemporary novels, generate new material through writing exercises, and workshop a chapter of each student's own novel-in-progress. Most importantly, the class will provide feedback to help you strengthen your work and support you as you move forward.

Please note: This is an online course.
For more information on additional online courses, please visit http://continuingstudies.stanford.edu/onlinewriting/.

Katharine Noel, Former Stegner Fellow and Jones Lecturer

Katharine Noel’s first novel, Halfway House, was a New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice and won the 2006 Kate Chopin Award. Her short stories have been anthologized in Best New American Voices, Outside Rules, and elsewhere. She also teaches in the MFA Program in Writing at California College of the Arts.

Preview the textbooks for this course:

The Descendants, Hemmings - ISBN 9780812977820

American Woman, Choi - ISBN 9780060542225

Deepening Fiction., Stone & Nyren - ISBN 032119537X