Move from outline to draft writing with crucial craft lessons from MFA faculty on scene design, dialogue, character development and plot.

About this course

Have you created an outline and now feel prepared to start writing your novel? Or have you started a novel draft only to find your interest or confidence waning? In this course, the international best-selling authors and professors from The University of British Columbia’s renowned MFA program introduce the essential fiction craft toolbox for writers struggling with the common hurdles of first drafts.

While ideas and inspiration are often enough to ignite interest in writing a novel, writers can quickly lose confidence, especially when their best efforts have inadvertently produced flat characters, waning conflicts, tangled plots and weak dialogue. Reaching your goal of writing (and perhaps, publishing) a novel requires an understanding of fiction’s deeper mechanics and a familiarity with the specific craft elements that will help translate your creativity and imagination into compelling paragraphs, scenes and chapters.

The course is recommended for professional and aspiring writers, writing groups, those participating in NaNoWriMo, teachers and anyone who has a novel in progress.

What you’ll learn

• The elements of complex, dimensional characters
• How to craft believable dramatic dialogue
• Tactics for managing complicated plots
• The demands of high emotional stakes from scene level to story level
• Strategies for seeing your draft through to completion