NVL 45 W — Novel Workshop for Manuscripts in Progress: Going the Distance
Quarter: Winter
Instructor(s): Stephanie Reents
Date(s): Jan 15—Mar 19
Class Recording Available: Yes
Class Meeting Day: Wednesdays
Class Meeting Time: 12:00—1:00 pm (PT)
Tuition: $1000
Refund Deadline: Jan 17
Unit(s): 2
Enrollment Limit: 18
Status: Registration opens Dec 2, 8:30 am (PT)
Quarter: Winter
Day: Wednesdays
Duration: 10 weeks
Time: 12:00—1:00 pm (PT)
Date(s): Jan 15—Mar 19
Unit(s): 2
Tuition: $1000
Refund Deadline: Jan 17
Instructor(s): Stephanie Reents
Enrollment Limit: 18
Recording Available: Yes
Status: Registration opens Dec 2, 8:30 am (PT)
Writing a novel is challenging. Like setting off on a long-distance road trip, it can be lonely and psychologically taxing, although it can also be thrilling. Sometimes the best strategy when working on a first draft is to get some miles beneath your wheels, put your pedal to the metal, and discover what your story is actually about. Whether you are stuck at Chapter Two, lost in the middle, or could use accountability and guidance, this course is designed to help you on your journey by providing the inspiration and structure needed to draft the next 50–80 pages of your manuscript. Generative exercises, weekly deadlines, and feedback focusing on possibilities and patterns—rather than problems—will inspire you to keep moving forward. Every week, students will have the space to submit up to 2,500 words, either inspired by a loose prompt or self-directed, for feedback from workshop groups of three or four and instructor comments. Weekly lectures on craft topics such as drama and improbability, raising the stakes, making scenes, and deepening point of view will enable you to bring new energy into your writing process and keep your momentum going as you near your final destination.
This course is designed for students who are actively drafting their novels rather than those looking for feedback on already finished manuscripts.
STEPHANIE REENTS
Author
Stephanie Reents is the author of The Kissing List, a collection of stories that was an Editors' Choice in The New York Times Book Review, and I Meant to Kill Ye, a bibliomemoir chronicling her journey into the strange void at the heart of Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian. She has twice received an O. Henry Prize for her short fiction. Her novel We Loved to Run is coming out in 2025. Reents received a BA from Amherst, a BA from Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, and an MFA from the University of Arizona. She was a Stegner Fellow at Stanford. Textbooks for this course:
(Required) Charles Baxter, The Art of Subtext: Beyond Plot (ISBN 978-1555974732)
(Required) Stephen Koch, The Modern Library Writer's Workshop: A Guide to the Craft of Fiction (ISBN 978-0375755583 )
(Required) Stephen Koch, The Modern Library Writer's Workshop: A Guide to the Craft of Fiction (ISBN 978-0375755583 )