This course will teach you how to write as quickly and imperfectly as possible to finish a first draft of your novel.
John Boyne wrote The Boy in the Striped Pajamas in less than three days. Kazuo Ishiguro drafted The Remains of the Day in four weeks. About his process, Ishiguro explained, “The priority was simply to get the ideas surfacing and growing. Awful sentences, hideous dialogue, scenes that went nowhere – I let them remain and ploughed on.” By examining the fast-drafting process of established writers, this course will teach you how to silence the inner critic and accept imperfection as a necessary part of writing the first draft of any book. The majority of each session will be a lecture; however, you should also expect to complete writing exercises or respond to writing prompts. You can expect each lecture to discuss some aspect of fast drafting, including but not limited to where to begin, how to outline and prepare, how to set goals and deadlines, and how to overcome mental obstacles. By the end of this course, you’ll have learned fast drafting techniques to help jumpstart a new writing project or reignite enthusiasm for a languishing manuscript. For the first class, you should make sure you know which writing project you’d like to focus on for the duration of the course.
Live video conference: This workshop will be held via our online video conferencing platform, Zoom. You can view brief tutorials on using the platform here. On the start date or the day before, participants will receive an email with login info (please check your spam if you don’t see it).
In this workshop you’ll learn:
- how to outline and prepare to write a first draft
- how to write a first draft
- how to set drafting goals and deadline
- how to overcome mental obstacles
Time requirements
- About one hour outside of class to prepare for each session.
Materials
- All reading materials will be provided.
Who should take this workshop?
- Fiction writers at various levels with a novel manuscript they would like to start or complete.
If you need an accommodation for this workshop, please contact us at access@writer.org. We will attempt to fulfill all requests, but advance notice is necessary to arrange for some accessibility services.
