How to Write a Novel: Writing the Draft

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Cours
en
Anglais
24 h
Ce contenu est noté 4.5 sur 5
Source
  • Sur www.edx.org
Conditions
  • Cours à partir de 295
Plus d'informations
  • 6 séquences
  • Niveau Intermédiaire
  • Débute le 24 avril 2023
  • Clôture le 9 juin 2023

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Détails du cours

Déroulé

WEEK BY WEEK BREAKDOWN

Every Week

Students will watch instructor videos, interviews with authors and readings. Each week there is at least one assignment, regular group discussion topics and instructor feedback in the form of a question & answer podcast.

Week 1: Introduction / The Aesthetic Journey

  • Introduction to the course.
  • Ways to structure and organize your writing time.
  • Point of view: from whose perspective will the reader experience the story? Each comes with its advantages and disadvantages.
  • Types of prose and their uses.
  • Voice: a strong, consistent stylistic quality that permeates your writing.
  • Beginnings. The first sentence, first paragraph, and first page.

Assignment : Explore several different openings for your novel and assess the impact of each one.

Week 2: The Art of Conflict and Tension

  • Active and Passive Characters. How to give a character more agency.
  • Character Complexity and Conflict. Internal, interpersonal and societal antagonisms help build complex and fully realized characters.
  • Tension in Scene.
  • Backstory and Flashbacks.

Assignment : Tackle a scene that illustrates a key “turning point” that offers crucial insight into your main character.

Week 3: Crafting Believable Dramatic Dialogue

  • What is the function of dialogue in fiction?
  • How dialogue differs from everyday speech?
  • What dialogue should never do.
  • What are the hallmarks of great dialogue.
  • How to work with subtext.
  • Exploring the depths of your character: what is spoken, what is unspoken and what is unspeakable.
  • How to format dialogue and work with dialogue tags.

Assignment : Write dialogue in several different forms, exploring the multiple ways it will function in your novel.

Week 4: Managing Plot

  • The evolving outline. What to do when you start to stray from your initial outline.
  • Troubleshooting Structural Problems..
  • Troubleshooting plot in five popular fiction genres (literary, speculative, crime, historical and romance).
  • Endings. How to navigate through writing an effective ending.

Assignment : Write the end of your novel: the last chapter, last scene, last moments. Tools of analysis.

Week 5: Research

  • Why do research? What can research bring to different types of fiction writing?
  • When to do research.
  • What should you research?
  • How do you best incorporate research?
  • Case studies. Historical Fiction, Speculative Fiction, Crime Fiction, and Socio-Political fiction.
  • The ethics of research.
  • Writing about yourself and your family.

Assignment : you will apply this week’s work in an exercise that challenges you to evaluate several different ways of incorporating research.

Week 6: Mind over Manuscript

  • Blind Alleys. How to identify and back out of them.
  • Procrastination and Hitting the Wall. Ways to combat these mental blocks
  • Grappling with Theme.
  • Dos and don'ts.

Assignment : This week's assignment will be to complete the Tool of Analysis. This will help you identify your weaknesses and ultimately provide the solutions to overcome them.

Prérequis

Students should be beginning or in the process of writing a novel.

Intervenants

Nancy Lee
Assistant Professor of Creative Writing
University of British Columbia

Annabel Lyon
Associate Professor of Creative Writing
University of British Columbia

Éditeur

L’Université de la Colombie-Britannique est fondée à Vancouver en 1908. Le College of British Columbia, est l'une des universités les plus prestigieuses d'Amérique du Nord, et compte parmi les meilleures universités au monde. UBC compte plus de 61 000 étudiants, répartis sur le campus historique de Vancouver (1908), et celui d'Okanagan (2005) et un budget annuel de 2,3 milliards de dollars.

Plateforme

EdX est une plateforme d'apprentissage en ligne (dite FLOT ou MOOC). Elle héberge et met gratuitement à disposition des cours en ligne de niveau universitaire à travers le monde entier. Elle mène également des recherches sur l'apprentissage en ligne et la façon dont les utilisateurs utilisent celle-ci. Elle est à but non lucratif et la plateforme utilise un logiciel open source.

EdX a été fondée par le Massachusetts Institute of Technology et par l'université Harvard en mai 2012. En 2014, environ 50 écoles, associations et organisations internationales offrent ou projettent d'offrir des cours sur EdX. En juillet 2014, elle avait plus de 2,5 millions d'utilisateurs suivant plus de 200 cours en ligne.

Les deux universités américaines qui financent la plateforme ont investi 60 millions USD dans son développement. La plateforme France Université Numérique utilise la technologie openedX, supportée par Google.

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