NVL 06 — Novel Writing for Absolute Beginners
Quarter: Winter
Instructor(s): Angela Pneuman
Date(s): Jan 22—Mar 26
Class Recording Available: No
Class Meeting Day: Wednesdays
Class Meeting Time: 6:00—8:30 pm (PT)
Tuition: $1000
Refund Deadline: Jan 24
Unit(s): 2
Enrollment Limit: 18
Status: Registration opens Dec 2, 8:30 am (PT)
Quarter: Winter
Day: Wednesdays
Duration: 10 weeks
Time: 6:00—8:30 pm (PT)
Date(s): Jan 22—Mar 26
Unit(s): 2
Tuition: $1000
Refund Deadline: Jan 24
Instructor(s): Angela Pneuman
Enrollment Limit: 18
Recording Available: No
Status: Registration opens Dec 2, 8:30 am (PT)
Starting a novel is an exciting venture—and one that can soon turn daunting. Unlike the compressed energy of a short story, the novel’s world spools out over time and often involves the management of layered plots and a large cast of characters. But these challenges are also opportunities. In this course, we will look at published novel beginnings to discover the narrative engines of the early chapters. We will also investigate the way writers such as Brit Bennett, Samantha Harvey, Scott Turow, and Jhumpa Lahiri maintain narrative tension throughout their books. We will talk about how this tension shapes finished work from these writers and from students’ own favorite writers. Through short writing assignments, we will try out different approaches to our own novel beginnings, and each student will be able to workshop one early chapter for helpful feedback.
This course is designed for writers who are just starting out on their novels as well as those who have novels well underway and are already thinking about revision.
ANGELA PNEUMAN
Author
Angela Pneuman is an MFA instructor at Sarah Lawrence College and executive director of the Napa Valley Writers’ Conference. She is the author of the novel Lay It on My Heart and the short story collection Home Remedies. Her fiction has appeared in The Best American Short Stories, Glimmer Train, The Virginia Quarterly Review, New England Review, and Ploughshares, and she is a contributor to Salon, The Believer, and The Rumpus. She was a Stegner Fellow at Stanford and received a PhD in English from SUNY Albany. Textbooks for this course:
(Required) Stephen Kock, The Modern Library Writers' Workshop: A Guide to the Craft of Fiction (ISBN 978-0375755583)