The Fast-Track Novel Course

Outline, write, and edit your novel to publishing standards with feedback on your manuscript

Time

200 lessons at your own pace, access one year

Price

One-off

4995

Save $

Monthly

455

One-off

3499

Save £

Monthly

319

Suitable for

Writers with some experience

Ideal for

Those aiming to get published

The pathway to publishing

Suitable for writers who are determined to secure literary agency representation for traditional publishing contracts. Undertake a complete review of your storyline for success, followed by writing a revised draft with mentoring followed by the careful attention of publishing editors from the Big Five publishers and a full manuscript review.

Write to get published

A springboard to success

Reasons not to get off to a good start on your next adventure

I don’t have a moment to
lose

Then you’re in the right place. We move at your pace! Take the lessons at your own speed. Schedule your coaching and editorial sessions as and when you want them. Want to get your next novel done on a deadline? Let’s write!

I’ve done a course or two
before, you know

Not another writing course. Your lessons include expert insights from our Booker-listed Founder. You’ll find them challenging and thought-provoking and you’ll be working with the best in the business—one on one.

I want to write my way, not for the ‘market’

The course begins with The Advanced Class, which will start by asking you questions to help you craft the novel you really want to write. You’re the golden goose! To write your very best book, we know we need to find your passion and get it on the page.

‘We’ll bypass the basics, cut the filler, and skip straight to the expert insights that will help you create a kick-ass story. You’ll learn some magic tricks to make your process leaner and keener.’

Louise Dean, Founder

Take absolute control of your story to write a brilliant novel with expert one-on-one guidance, from blank page to book deal

The Fast-Track Novel Course is our insider program. It begins with The Advanced Outline Class, to outline a novel with some sharp moves to get you writing not just any novel, but the novel of your life!

Write with coaching sessions from a published, bestselling, and award-winning author of your choice. All rooting for you, and at your side every step of the way, to help you develop your story to its full potential. You’ll go on to polish and edit your work with editors from the Big Five publishers—Penguin Random House, Hachette, HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, and Macmillan. You’ll enjoy a full manuscript read from your editor with detailed feedback to raise your game to publishing standards.

When you join The Novelry on a course, your plan includes membership and access to all our online writing workshops and events. You’ll be part of The Advanced Outline Class group, with a regular and dedicated small-group live class. You’ll meet writers as serious as you are about your career. Plus, you’ll be eligible for our direct submission of your novel to leading literary agents.

Nail your theme, pack a high-concept hook, and plan your plot to go from stage to page in style with The Advanced Outline Class to outline your best novel

Dive into The Ninety Day Novel to prepare and submit your storyline for review from your coach before you start writing, and pace your first draft with a lesson a day and regular coaching sessions

Begin The Big Edit with feedback from your editor on your chapter outline before you revise using the cool, clear logic of the lessons

Submit your novel for The Ultimate Manuscript Assessment for a comprehensive review from the editorial team and prepare to enter the publishing process

Submission to leading literary agents by invitation

The Fast-Track Novel

Toward successful submission to literary agents

The Advanced Outline Class

Master your story

Outline your novel to ensure you have a commercially sound base for a story that readers, literary agents, and publishers will love.

Lessons: 30 (1 hour each)

1 x writer coaching session

Discover ‘The Big Question’ that is the main driver of a page-turning read. Create a credible setting and establish a sense of place. Formulate your theme, consider the narrative perspective, prepare a story structure, and learn from the works of Patrick Rothfuss, Liane Moriarty, Sally Rooney, Philip Roth, Daphne du Maurier, Oyinkan Braithwaite, Agatha Christie, Mark Haddon, and more.

💡 Lesson 3: Theme

What do you have to say to readers? You’ll define the central concern of the story—emotional, moral, or philosophical—and learn how to use it to guide your choices. Theme isn’t something you tack on later. It should shape your character, structure, and stakes from the start.

👤 Lesson 4: The main character

What do they want? What’s in their way? What are they afraid of? How are they failing to see themselves clearly? You’ll define the personal failing or blindspot that gives your story stakes. You’ll dig into contradiction and vulnerability—the stuff that makes a character work on the page. It’s about bringing to life a person the reader can care about.

❓ Lesson 5: The big question

What keeps the reader turning pages? What are we reading to find out? You’ll learn how to shape that question for narrative momentum—and how it evolves across the novel to sustain reader interest. This is how you make your novel unputdownable.

🌍 Lesson 6: The setting

Settings carry tone, reveal character, and create pressure. You will create a setting that’s far more than a backdrop. Explore what your setting says about the world of your story, and what it makes possible—or impossible—for your characters.

🪞 Lesson 7: Narrative perspective

You’ll test the implications of first versus third person, close versus omniscient—and make a deliberate choice. You’ll explore perspective as a moral lens. You’ll understand how to shape the reader’s experience through point of view, and why it matters.

📚 Lesson 8: The Hero Books

You’ll choose a published novel to study for reference—not imitation. You’ll break it down structurally, scene by scene, and use it to pressure-test your own decisions. How is it built? Why does it work? It’s your North Star. The Hero Book will act as a guide you can return to when you feel unsure or stuck. We’ll show you how the great authors used theirs.

🏗️ Lesson 9: Story structure

You’ll build a working outline that gives you freedom to write—and the motivation to finish. This isn’t about formula. It’s about finding a structure that fits your story. You’ll sketch the arc, midpoint, and ending, and learn how structure emerges from character change. Learn how to manage pace, progression, and emotional turns. Everything in the right order at the right time.

You’ll move from sketch to scaffold—developing your plot and cast into a workable plan. You’ll start plotting with purpose, sketching the bones of your plot and populating it with a psychologically rich ensemble aligned to your theme.

🗺️ Lesson 10: Starting to plot

Learn to identify the opposing beliefs that drive the story—and use them to structure the conflict. Shape the plot around your character’s emotional and moral journey. Get your first glimpse of the full story arc here! You’ll learn to weave your story’s moral tension—the rope of theme—through the story. Your plot will no longer be a sequence of events, but a structured reckoning.

👥 Lesson 11: The cast

Who belongs in this story—and what role do they play? Using real-life observation, you’ll be able to give even minor characters agency, conflict, and psychological coherence. Rather than leaning on tropes or clichés, breathe life into your secondary cast with quirks, contradictions, and hidden histories. Understand how to reveal the inner lives of even your smallest roles. Cue reader empathy or suspicion not just through dialogue and action, but through nuance: their associates, appearance, and physical gestures.

✍️ Lesson 12: Treatment

You’ll write a few paragraphs to test the shape and tone. This helps you find weaknesses early, before committing to chapters. It’s your first reality check. You’ll test your idea by laying out the key beats and emotional shifts, checking for shape, tension, and movement. It’s a low-pressure draft of the big picture—a way to catch problems early and spot what’s missing before you dive in.

❤️ Lesson 13: The main character—feeling for them

What do they want? But, more crucially, what do they really need? It’s time to map how this tension plays out across the plot—and how it earns reader empathy. You’ll begin to view your protagonist as both a person and a philosophical battleground. This lesson helps you discover how your character behaves under pressure and how their internal contradictions drive the story.

⚖️ Lesson 14: Midpoint

You’ll define what changes halfway through—and why it matters. This moment should reframe the story and shift the stakes. Learn how to use the midpoint as a fulcrum: a scene or revelation that changes how the character (and reader) understands the stakes and brings momentum to your second half.

🧮 Lesson 15: The first plan

Now to create a more formal working outline! You’ll decide what needs to happen at the beginning and what shifts in the middle, marking key beats, emotional shifts, and the endgame. You’ll discover how to keep your outline flexible, so it supports creativity. This is your launchpad.

📝 Lesson 16: From stage to page

You’ll zoom in from scene shape to sentence texture. How do you handle interiority? When do you withhold? You’ll study how prose delivers emotion—and how to begin writing with forward momentum, not perfection. Learn how to handle exposition, interiority, and stage direction with lightness and control.

Let’s plunge into the hidden undercurrents that drive your novel. Enrich your plot with dramatic tension, emotional truth, and layered characters. You’ll layer complexity into your story by building a more psychologically charged protagonist who is dramatically at odds with the world you’re building around them.

🎭 Lesson 17: No more playacting

How does your main character perform for the world? How does that persona crack under pressure? What are they hiding? You’ll reveal your protagonist’s false self—the version they show the world. Consider how the façade cracks under pressure to dramatize that collapse. You’ll get the tools to dramatize internal conflict so that every scene reveals something new, so that you stop writing ‘about’ your character and start writing from within them.

📈 Lesson 18: The plot thickens!

You’ll build a chapter-by-chapter sketch. Go from event-based plotting to pressure-based escalation. How does each chapter change the character or their understanding of the world? Create moments of both surprise and inevitability, moving from false belief to earned truth, while exploring pacing, scene variation, and chapter length, to stay in masterful control of the story.

✍️ Lesson 19: Process

Define your optimal creative system. How do you caretake your ideas? How do you defend your writing time? Build habits that support momentum—and learn how to keep moving when things wobble. Pack a refreshed creative process that supports consistency and flow, and make writing a happy part of your daily life.

🧬 Lesson 20: Biography

Now write a formal biography of your protagonist. Not just what happened to them—but how it has shaped them. You’ll explore formative moments, internalized beliefs, and buried wounds. Discover how the past shapes present tension, and avoid backstory that derails the story. You’ll use this to guide how your character reacts under pressure and raise the game of their transformation.

🎯 Lesson 21: The B Story

You’ll choose a subplot that sharpens the main arc. This could be a relationship, professional thread, or personal reckoning. You’ll define how it echoes or contrasts with the central conflict—and make it count. Learn how to use subplots to add contrast, deepen theme, and keep your main character’s arc moving forward.

👤 Lesson 22: The second character

You’ll cast your protagonist’s foil—the person who holds a mirror to their flaw or desire. You’ll choose the one other character who matters most to the journey—often an ally, foil, or emotional catalyst. You’ll define the role they play in your main character’s transformation and explore how they pressure the protagonist to act, change, or break. This isn’t just a sidekick. This is the relationship that forces growth, complicates the path, and raises the stakes.

👥 Lesson 23: The cast review

Time for a review of the ensemble. Does every character earn their place? Do they each hold a clear role in theme, conflict, or plot? Let’s streamline your cast so that each scene stays active and emotionally charged. You’ll look at dynamics between characters—who supports, who challenges, and what’s at risk when those relationships shift. You’ll ensure every character serves a function—structurally or emotionally.

The last steps to go from plan to page with panache. You’ll stress-test your plan, face your doubts, sharpen what’s working, and cut what’s not. By the end, you’ll meet your best version of your novel—and begin it!

Discover advanced craft magic tricks and skills from great authors. Then, enjoy access to resources, advice on marketing, social media, publishing communication skills, and other essentials for your career as a published author.

🛡 Lesson 24: The bulletproof chapter

Learn how to shape every chapter with a simple format that makes your writing life easy. You’ll examine how great writers handle opening, movement, and close—from the taut suspense of Agatha Christie to the observational nuance of Sally Rooney. Explore the functions of a chapter: not just pacing, but change. You’ll finish with a test chapter you can hold up to the light—built to withstand doubt and revision.

🎬 Lesson 25: Opening the story

What makes a great first chapter? You’ll study how different authors establish tone, character, and tension early—without front-loading or over-explaining. Test different types of openings (in-scene, backstory, frame) and write your own opening with control and clarity of intent.

💭 Lesson 26: Doubts and dithering

When panic sets in, you’ll need tools. This lesson helps you diagnose stuck points—second-guessing, overwhelm, or fear—and guides you back to the plan. You’ll learn how to break through resistance using pragmatic strategies drawn from real writing lives.

✂️ Lesson 27: Cut!

You’ll practice cutting what’s not earning its place. This isn’t editing for polish—it’s structural revision. Learn how to spot scenes that duplicate work, characters that weaken tension, or threads that drift off-theme—and how to remove them with confidence. You’ll learn how to spot duplication, flab, and off-theme drift.

🧩 Lesson 28: The last piece

Take stock of what’s missing. This could be a reveal that lands too late, a set-up that lacks payoff, or a character whose function isn’t clear. This lesson helps you test your structure, checking the weight of your midpoint, the depth of your B Story, and the balance of action and reaction. You’ll address the gaps before they become problems in the draft.

👋 Lesson 29: Meet your novel

Here, you’ll summarize what you’ve built—a working map of your story. Not a pitch or a synopsis, but a private tool. You’ll define the arc, emotional spine, and key beats in one page. This gives you a clear guide for the writing ahead.

🚀 Lesson 30: Onward

No more outlining. Now it’s about sustaining energy, managing expectations, and making steady progress. You’ll explore what a ‘good’ writing day looks like, focusing on meaningful output over perfection. You’ll decide where to begin (not necessarily at Chapter One), how to set targets that support momentum, and how to keep checking your emotional resources as you go. Learn how to track ideas without cluttering your draft, and how to protect your writing time from feedback too early. The goal is trust in your process.

🪄 Bonus lessons

Magic tricks and tips

These practical tips are your secret stash—ready when you need them. A grab-bag of tools, including smart ways to handle exposition, build emotional subtext, and manage reader expectations. Use it when you get stuck or need to sharpen a scene on the fly. From keeping tension alive in quiet scenes to handling dialogue and exposition, this collection gives you real tools for real problems.

Tips for published authors: social media

You’ll explore how to use social media intentionally—as a tool, not a distraction. Discover how to set boundaries, establish your voice, and define your goals. You’ll learn how to engage in ways that protect your energy and reflect your values.

Career advice

You’ll get practical, honest insights about the writing life—what it takes to finish, how to know when to share your work, and what agents and publishers really look for.

The Ninety Day Novel Class

Prepare and develop your initial idea, construct your novel from the ground up, develop a productive writing practice, power through the middle with bold plotting, and raise the stakes towards a satisfying ending.

Lessons: 100 (1-hour each)

6 x author-coaching sessions

Discover the big hack that will change your creative life. Learn the one characteristic great writers need, and the essential ingredient that makes a page-turner. Boost your creativity, and receive guidance on creating the time and mental space to write around your day job.
‍

✨ Welcome

Set the foundation for writing your novel with some espresso shot to boost your morale and get you in the flow. Kick some old habits with some unusual tips to change your state of mind to one that is positively refreshed and raring to write!

📚 Read and Be Inspired

Read what you want to write! Study first chapters to see how great novels raise questions they later answer. Focus on story over style. Use reading to quell doubt daily, and build your confidence. Keep notes and prepare questions for your coach as your story begins to take shape.

🌙 Bedtime Stories

Reconnect with the books that first stirred a desire to write. Reflect on the emotional imprint of your early reading. Writing begins with that same private charge. Let gratitude, not pressure, guide the work. The impulse to write is your longing to speak across time and space.

🔁 Habits

Design a writing life that fits your real one. Build a simple routine that anchors your writing at a regular time each day. Avoid waiting for inspiration—consistency is the source of creative energy. Frequency matters more than duration.

🧠 The Big Hack

Make a meaningful sacrifice to claim time for writing—something must go. Identify what you’ll give up to honor the work ahead. Interrupt the cycle of perfectionism by writing fast and free. Write by hand in timed sessions to bypass the inner critic. Speed lowers self-consciousness and unlocks voice. Capture raw material first—refinement comes later.

🔒 Privacy

Protect your work from feedback, judgment, or scrutiny while it’s still forming. Keep the process private to preserve freedom and courage. Don’t announce your novel or share early pages. Privacy is the condition for real discovery and risk.

❤️ Empathy

Build a character by stepping inside their experience. Begin with feeling, not facts—let your empathy lead. Treat your character as a mystery to discover, not a device to control. The better you understand their contradictions, the more truthful and compelling your story will be.

🌫️ Moods

Track your emotional state and work with it, not against it. Don’t wait to feel inspired—use your current mood as material. Keep writing through restlessness, boredom, or doubt. Show up. Let the act of writing transform your mood, rather than relying on your mood to begin.

🙏 Bless You, Writers

Recognize that writing has its complexities. You’ll face resistance, loneliness, and self-doubt—but writing is an act of generosity. Honor your need to create, and commit to it. Writing well means living well. Trust the process, protect your spirit, and keep faith with your story.

🧩 What is Story?

A story begins with change. It puts a person in jeopardy. Story is structure—not style—and it must change the character by the end. Plot isn’t decoration; it’s the engine that reveals who your character truly is capable of becoming.

Take it steady with step-by-step guidance to prepare a one-page plan that packs a big plot. Say goodbye to writer’s block. A good story (almost) writes itself, so you and your writing coach will put an exciting storyline in place to get off to a cracking start.
‍

🧭 Lesson 1: How to stay on track with the course

Use the first 15 days to build your story—alternating between planning and early exploratory writing—before your full draft begins. Stay connected to your writing coach and submit ‘The Plan’ for feedback to keep your story development on track. If you’re rewriting, use this phase to reassess structure and elevate your idea. This is where you build the habit, commit to daily 60-minute writing sessions, and set yourself up to finish a first draft.

📖 Lesson 2: Welcome to your novel

Shape your novel’s premise by crafting a working title, a one-line pitch, and a promise to your reader. Start with something you know or care deeply about, then create distance by shifting time, place, or character to unlock perspective and theme. Identify your protagonist’s flaw and charm, then root your story in the voice and style of books you love. Keep refining the idea daily in your notebook—flipping it, challenging it, adding stakes—until it becomes a story worth the reader’s time.‍

🦸 Lesson 3: The Hero Book

Choose a single Hero Book to guide your novel-writing journey that offers a clear, reliable structure. Read it nightly to internalize its rhythm and shape. This book becomes your technical mentor, helping you solve story problems as you draft. It’s your companion for the next ninety days. Use it to support your structure, voice, and ambition.

⏰ Lesson 4: The golden hour

Build the habit of showing up daily for one hour to keep your novel alive in your subconscious. Even a light touch—reading yesterday’s work or jotting notes—feeds the 23 other hours of reflection that shape the story. Track-laying happens between sessions. Momentum comes from continuity, not volume. One hour is enough.

📚 Lesson 5: The genre

Understand what genre is and how it works. Learn how to use genre to define your story’s territory, structure, and reader promise. Explore examples across fiction to see how genre shapes plot, character, setting, and theme. Begin to identify the genre of your novel to give it coherence and direction.

🏔️ Lesson 6: The setting

Choose a time and place that shapes your characters, plot, and mood. Use setting to generate atmosphere, reveal character, or frame the story’s moral universe. Research real locations or build imagined ones that feel lived-in and essential to the story. For fantasy or sci-fi, create thresholds between worlds and combine the familiar with the strange. Make setting work as metaphor, emotional driver, and lens for your protagonist’s worldview.

🎩 Lesson 7: The magic trick

Build your story’s arc using the three-part structure of The Pledge, The Turn, and The Prestige. Shape your plot around a character’s transformation—what they want, what they resist, and what they become. Practice illusion through moral change. Sketch a journey that promises real stakes and delivers powerful, surprising resolution.

👤 Lesson 8: The main character

Design a character with a clear flaw, desire, and contradiction. Anchor the plot in their resistance to change. Focus on how they behave under pressure—not backstory, but present struggle. Build empathy by showing what’s at stake for them emotionally. Give them a worldview that will be challenged. Let the story test and transform it.

🧱 Lesson 9: The plot

Start shaping your plot by identifying the problem your main character must face. Learn how to use structure as a flexible guide, not a rigid map, by working back from a possible ending and sketching key complications along the way. Explore the ‘Man in a Hole’ story shape and other narrative trajectories to create emotional movement. Begin using The Plan—your one-page outline—as a working tool that responds to the writing. Focus on pressure, escalation, and change as you throw rocks at your character’s beliefs and force a reckoning.

🪜 Lesson 10: Simple story structure

Learn the foundational two-act structure—problem and solution—anchored by a midpoint that forces transformation. Use The Five Fs® to map your story’s arc: Flaw, False Hope, Flight, Fury, and Facing It. Understand how each stage reveals your character’s blindspot, trials, and growth. Study examples from contemporary fiction to see how this structure builds momentum and resolution. Begin sketching your own Five Fs to shape the outline of your plot, using this framework as a flexible, development-focused tool—not a rule.

🪝 Lesson 11: The hook

Create a sharp, one-sentence pitch that captures your novel’s premise, character, conflict, and stakes. Build it around irony—emotional, moral, or situational—to give the idea lift and twist. Learn the structure of a compelling hook: who it’s about, what they want, what’s in their way, and what’s at risk. Explore techniques from both literary and high-concept fiction, including the ‘X meets Y’ formula and the ‘What if...’ prompt. Use the hook to test your story’s power, motivate your process, and prepare for agent pitches, publisher sales copy, and submission success.

👥 Lesson 12: The cast

Build your cast by splitting your own traits into characters, then widen the net. Use parts of your personality—flaws, strengths, contradictions—to shape your leads. Add figures from your life with a twist: change names, genders, or roles. Invent with feeling, not revenge. Explore the ethics of representation and consider whose story you’re telling. Draw from lived experience or research with care when writing outside your own identity. Finish with a list of characters who offer dramatic potential and truth.

🥸 Lesson 13: Character development

Create credible characters by listing their quirks, flaws, fears, and secrets—then use those to reveal personality through action and dialogue. Skip backstory dumps by knowing each character deeply: their job, income, past loves, relationships, regrets, and what they want. Use a short list of 20 prompts to fast-track this work, unlocking plot and scene ideas as you go. Focus on the top five to ten characters and return to this exercise during slower writing days to keep the work moving. Characters drive story—start drawing them with precision.

🗂️ Lesson 14: Getting organized

Set up your writing environment and tools to keep momentum. Use folders to store drafts, character sheets, and notes. Keep a hard copy of your outline visible. Use your notebook to capture freewriting, ideas, and emotional responses. Track your scenes with a spreadsheet or calendar. Protect time with a daily writing schedule. Build a system that supports consistency and focus. Writing a novel requires discipline—your workspace and tools must help you stay clear, prepared, and committed.

🗺️ Lesson 15: The Plan

Create a one-page snapshot of your story to guide your writing and coaching sessions. Draft your hook, synopsis, theme, and the central question your reader will be reading to answer. Use this live document to shape your plot as you write—updating it often. Submit your Plan at least 24 hours before each session so your coach can track your development and help refine your premise. This working outline will clarify your structure, genre, and goals, becoming the backbone of your novel and a professional tool to move your idea toward publication.

✍️ Lesson 16: Let’s write!

Begin drafting, even if your story feels incomplete. Focus on daily progress—start with 250 words and build gradually. Use your updated Plan weekly to track changes, knowing your plot and character may shift as you write. Don’t share your draft yet. Protect your focus. Show up, write, revise, and keep going.

🧠 Lesson 17: Point of view

Choose between first or third person based on the story’s needs. Learn how first person creates immersion and unreliability—ideal for thrillers and character-led narratives—while third offers distance, breadth, and universality. Understand free indirect speech as a powerful tool to blend close perspective with third-person narration. Try your scene in different POVs to find the best fit.

🗣️ Lesson 18: Voice

Forget finding your voice—focus instead on speaking plainly and truly. Let voice emerge both from how you see the world and how you might address a smarter stranger. Good voice convinces by not trying too hard. Explore examples of relaxed, confident storytelling in action. Avoid fakery or flourish. Use understatement, guilelessness, and humor as your tools. The goal isn’t to impress—it’s to invite the reader in so they forget the writer is there.

🪟 Lesson 19: Chapter one

Learn why first chapters are never final—they’re rewritten dozens of times—and how even great writers fumbled their openings. Discover the importance of setting a calm, confident tone, introducing character and setting and piquing the reader’s curiosity. Focus on what your protagonist wants, hint at what they need, and begin with a grounded moment that reflects your theme. Write 250 relaxed words.

🕸️ Lesson 20: Character mapping

Design each supporting character with a moral arc that affects your protagonist’s development. Map their trajectory—how they change across the story—using simple moral shifts. Ensure each character throws ‘rocks’ at the hero to reveal flaws and create friction. Balance your cast across the moral spectrum and track their influence on the plot. Use The Novelry’s Four Types Method as a tool for close-knit groups. Once you know what each character wants and how they behave, you’re ready to write them scene by scene.

🧑‍🤝‍🧑 Lesson 21: Relationships

Build a dynamic web of relationships that define your protagonist’s moral arc. Learn to map each character’s role as helper or hinderer, anchoring your story in conflict and desire. Study triangular tensions and push-pull dynamics that generate dramatic momentum. Explore subplots by uncovering hidden motives and unspoken needs. Create a visual character map to clarify narrative pressure points and refine every scene. Let tension between characters shape your story’s energy, movement, and meaning.

👐 Lesson 22: Emotional strategies

Assign each major character a core emotional strategy—how they’ve learned to get love and attention. Choose from four core types: the Savior, the Flower, the Hero, and the Recluse. Observe how this ingrained tactic shapes their relationships, drives their dialogue, and triggers conflict. Use this lens to enrich character interactions, heighten tension, and create psychological credibility. Characters may moderate or switch strategies depending on the scene, but one dominant ploy should underpin each principal’s behavior.

🌳 Lesson 23: The theme

Test every story element—setting, cast, and plot—against a central thematic tension: what argument is the novel making? Explore conflicting values in your characters to dramatize this tension, placing your protagonist at the center of a tug-of-war. Use bold statements like ‘X is more likely than Y’ to guide your choices. Add your working theme to The Plan.

💓 Lesson 24: The heart of a story

Find the emotional truth at the center of your novel—a moment of vulnerability, connection, or personal reckoning that carries moral weight. Begin with a private dedication to someone who embodies what matters most to you. This becomes your compass. Let your heart lead the writing, drawing from love, loss, and care to shape meaning for the reader. Select a guiding quote or song to anchor your intent. When you write from feeling, the reader feels it too. That’s the story’s purpose: to make us care.

🕊️ Lesson 26: The sacrifice

Explore sacrifice as the measure of commitment in story and life. Learn how great stories—from ancient myth to The Alchemist—use sacrifice. Understand its central role in the Hero’s Journey, where the protagonist gives up comfort for a greater purpose. Discipline reveals strength. This lesson invites a deeper connection between writer and story, asking what your characters are willing to lose.

🔨 Lesson 27: A better craftsman

Step back from the page and assess your work. Re-read your recent writing to identify weak scenes, tired phrasing, and moments where plot, dialogue, or tone drift off-course. Revisit your Plan, revise it if the story has shifted, and tighten your cast’s motivations. Root out clichés. End each chapter with a tease. Let the prose be plain to support the story’s truth. Shape your material—but don’t overwork it. Today, write as an editor.

🖼️ Lesson 28: The big picture

Visualize your story as a sequence of six turning-point scenes, using cinematic techniques to clarify structure and momentum. Identify your protagonist, goal, antagonistic force, and stakes. Then build a visual storyboard using notecards or tools like Canva to map transitions and flesh out scenes. Each location must earn its place.

🎬 Lesson 29: Happy writing

Learn how to work through self-doubt, navigate real-life interruptions, and make meaningful progress scene by scene. Discover proven mindset strategies from working writers—including how to embrace the rhythms of good and bad writing days, stay grounded in real life, and use your Hero Book to problem-solve at night. Leave the desk on time, avoid early fiddling, and trust the day-to-day process.

🧮 Lesson 30: Taking stock

Pause to review progress before moving to the next phase. Use the stocktaking spreadsheet to chart chapter-by-chapter word counts, setbacks, and lessons learned. Update The Plan as needed and reflect on how far you’ve come. If you feel off-track, schedule time with your coach. Whether slow or fast, the point is to keep going. This is a victory lap before the next leg: The Swim.

Learn expert skills and insider techniques to quickly improve your writing style. Find your voice and build your confidence as your word count passes the 10,000-word mark.
‍

🏊‍♂️ Lesson 31: In the swim

Enter the Swim Phase—a shift from story set-up to story flow. Revisit the simple five-part structure to sketch out the story shape without over-planning. Learn how Kazuo Ishiguro wrote The Remains of the Day in just four weeks using ‘The Crash’: a self-imposed writing lockdown focused on output, not polish. Learn how compulsion drives story. When a character wants something intensely, the novel almost writes itself. This phase is about rhythm, grace, and pace. Begin writing forward with daily momentum and character-led intent.

🧭 Lesson 32: Moral range

Explore your protagonist’s capacity for action under pressure by mapping their moral range. Define what they can and can’t do, and identify the lie they live by that distorts their worldview. Use this to create tension scene by scene—especially as the story shifts from old world to new. Know when to press the button—what they’ll do when cornered—to drive story turns and deepen emotional impact.

🔥 Lesson 33: Compulsion

Pinpoint your main character’s compulsion—the hidden need that drives their actions, blinds them to truth, and fuels the story’s engine. Learn how desire, denial, and delusion work together to create narrative drive. Explore how this inner hunger creates moral tension and raises stakes. Repressed or transgressive compulsions create page-turning drama. Use moral range and inner conflict to expose the character’s organizing myth and push the story toward revelation, transformation, or downfall.

🎭 Lesson 34: Conflict

Build conflict that reveals theme. Let your protagonist and antagonist pull from opposite ends of a moral or emotional spectrum. Use tension to test values, surface hidden agendas, and create moments of rupture that shape character and story. Design the moment of greatest conflict so that it dramatizes the central question of your novel and forces change.

🪄 Lesson 35: From magic to mystery

Let the mystery deepen as your draft develops. Shift from plotting answers to posing questions—what the reader is reading to find out, and what you’re writing to discover. Use the one-page plan to hold structure lightly while staying open to surprise. At the two-thirds mark, allow meaning to emerge—private, profound, and unspeakable. Write to learn what haunts you. Let mystery drive the story forward.‍

📚 Lesson 36: How to write a cult classic

Borrow Jack Kerouac’s methods to create immersive, character-led fiction with lasting impact. Study his use of real people, not types, and mimic his overfamiliarity, fast prose, and vivid detail to convey immediacy. Learn to write with pace and presence—using observation over exposition—to give the illusion of spontaneity. Use these techniques to produce bold, idiosyncratic work.

🎭 Lesson 37: A real dream

Master the technique of ‘show, don’t tell’ by using concrete sensory detail and true-to-life dialogue to immerse the reader. Learn how to build scenes that feel vivid while still knowing when to step in and tell. Explore how Kerouac’s prose reveals the power of language to reflect emotion, and where pure ‘showing’ can fail.

🫂 Lesson 38: Assumed familiarity

Learn how assumed familiarity can immerse the reader instantly—bringing characters to life without formal introduction. Study how Kerouac uses eccentricity, catchphrases, and vivid, selective detail to distinguish a large cast. Use tics, colorful backstories, and out-of-type traits to avoid stereotypes and animate even minor characters in a few bold strokes.

👑 Lesson 39: The romantic imagination

Explore how the author Muriel Spark used fiction to exalt the romantic imagination over realism, building an authorial approach of taste, sensibility, and theme. Learn how to channel your own aesthetic convictions into character and story, free from convention. Discover how to make the uncommon feel true, how to embed meaning through voice and tone, and how to use fiction to reframe reality.

🔁 Lesson 40: The use of repetition

Use repetition to build intimacy with economy. Establish character through repeated phrases or gestures. Repetition keeps the reader’s eye on the cast while you advance theme. Deploy signature catchphrases that echo the novel’s central question, like a red ball bouncing across the story. Don’t repeat themes directly—repeat character affectations. Later, in the edit, you will trace this coded pattern through every page to sharpen focus and create a story that keeps readers turning pages.‍

♻️ Lesson 41: Redemption

Explore how great fiction offers moral restoration—not through absolution, but through affection and time. Learn how to use the redemptive arc to shift your character from what they want to what they need. Study the technique of flash-forward to deliver a sense of earned perspective. Redemption can be quiet or spiritual, structural or thematic. Understand how even flawed characters can be forgiven, and why good writing must grapple with grace.

🥛 Lesson 42: Keep it simple

Streamline your story by asking: whose story is this, what do they learn, and how do they change? Reduce characters, settings, and complications that aren’t essential. Troubleshoot problems like weak conflict or a protagonist too close to yourself. Use quick fixes—change gender, background, or name—to create distance. Anchor the plot in present conflict, not backstory. The goal: a clean, energetic through line.

✂️ Lesson 43: Overwriting

Learn how to cut overwriting before it sabotages your story. This lesson shows how bloated prose—didactic tangents, tired set pieces, excess emotion, and decorative adverbs—slows your pace and distances readers. Study examples from Hemingway, Baldwin, Morrison, and Walker to see how great writers use restraint. Apply three core techniques: trim adjectives and adverbs, reduce description to pinpointed detail, and shorten sentence length. Good writing leaves space for the reader.‍

✍️ Lesson 44: Becoming an author

Start working like a professional preparing for publication. Learn how to format your manuscript correctly—spacing, punctuation, paragraphing, and chapter layout all contribute to how the reader receives your work. Adopt a consistent file naming system, save drafts daily. Use a clean, conservative layout to earn trust before your story delivers the surprises. This lesson sets the standards that separate the aspiring writer from the working author.

📍 Lesson 45: The midpoint

Pinpoint the exact moment when your character can no longer go back—the midpoint of the novel. Identify the event or crisis that forces a shift in strategy, where their old ways fail and a new outlook begins. Show how they absorb qualities of their antagonist, confront hard truths, and begin their transformation. Update The Plan with this turning point, anchoring it in theme and character arc. This lesson crystallizes your story’s change trajectory—what they wanted was wrong; now it’s time to fight for what they need.

Here’s where you fall in love with your story. Banish bad habits and keep your eye on what the reader wants to stay on track with your plot. Discover some game-changing writing power tools, and raise the stakes in your story.
‍

🎵 Lesson 46: Music

Use music as a tool to charge the energy and rhythm of your writing. This lesson introduces a new creative phase—The Heat Phase—focused on boosting pace. Learn how instrumental music can lift your prose and how lyric-driven tracks can teach economy. By the end, you’ll build a writing practice rooted in pace and feeling.‍

🔥 Lesson 47: From What If to Why?

Shift the driving question of your novel from ‘What if?’ to ‘Why?’ to deepen plot and character. Refine the core reader question using Maslow’s hierarchy of needs—starting from physical survival and safety to love, esteem, and purpose. Study how bestselling novels sustain tension through a single, evolving question. Use your character’s willful refusal to meet basic needs to create dramatic intrigue. Craft a story that plays on human behavior, digging into what your character won’t do—and why. A great novel hinges on one bold, burning question.

🧵 Lesson 48: The B Story

Construct a subplot that amplifies your novel’s theme and throws the main character’s journey into sharper relief. This secondary storyline should represent the opposite value system or outcome—embodied by a standout secondary character—and bring it into conflict with the ‘A’ plot. Study how published novels use B Stories to heighten stakes and expose the moral consequences of your protagonist’s choices. Decide where this subplot will peak, ensuring it helps your hero reject the extreme and claim their own way forward.

🤥 Lesson 49: The lie

Find your novel’s core message by identifying the lie it reveals. Lies generate conflict, fuel suspense, and distort desire—whether personal, political, or cultural. Use examples from Orwell, Du Maurier, and Coetzee to examine how theme emerges when falsehood is exposed. Reframe character motivation by showing what they believe that isn’t true, and structure your novel as a journey from illusion to truth. Learn how to embed the lie in dialogue, catchphrases, and chapter turns to heighten dramatic stakes.

🧌 Lesson 50: I’m a creep

Use your shadow self to unlock honesty in your writing. Identify your flaws, contradictions, and moral complexities. Practice observing your darkest instincts, then shape them into your protagonist’s turning point. Keep a visible list of problems as they arise in your draft; naming them unlocks solutions. Learn to slow narrative time around self-revelation moments, as Colm Tóibín does, to give moral insight weight and emotional clarity.

😨 Lesson 51: Suspense

Build suspense by withholding information and creating unease. Study how Rebecca and In a Dark, Dark Wood use repetition, contradiction, and delay to disorient and tease the reader. Use short chapters, flashbacks, and emotionally charged contrasts—hot/cold, light/dark—to keep tension rising. Assign a ‘trigger word’ to each chapter and increase its danger over time. Withhold answers until after the midpoint, when the worst thing must happen. Suspense is built on uncertainty—what the reader fears is more powerful than what they know.‍

🔧 Lesson 52: Make it harder

Raise the stakes. Impose constraints to sharpen your writing: shorten chapters, limit word counts, or apply a ticking clock. Increase external pressure on your main character—cut resources, add danger, create urgency. Tight structure boosts pace, and hard limits force invention. The harder the context, the more potent the message.‍

💬 Lesson 53: Crackling conversations

Write dialogue that feels alive and loaded with intent. Learn how to craft character agendas, cut exposition, and leave space for subtext. Discover how to avoid dull ‘ping-pong’ exchanges and use silence, refusal, or abrupt exits for tension. Explore why contractions, clipped speech, and differentiated voices make dialogue real. Master clean tags, minimal adverbs, and active scenes that reveal character beneath the lines. This is where dialogue starts doing real narrative work.‍

🧠 Lesson 54: That’s peculiar!

Learn how to write with dissonance—deliberately placing details that don’t fit. Study the masters of the short form, like Chekhov, Carver, and Hemingway, to sharpen your ability to show what jars instead of what explains. Use visual discord to jolt your reader’s perception and invite emotional depth without melodrama. Highlight sensory oddities and peculiarities that spark vivid immersion. Choose standout details that linger in the mind. Let your prose be unexpected, strange, and true.‍

🎵 Lesson 55: The leitmotif

Discover how a light recurring detail—like a phrase, image, or object—can build continuity, add depth, and create intimacy between writer and reader. Explore the difference between heavy-handed symbols and subtle echoes that function like a shared in-joke or chorus. With examples from Vonnegut, Kundera, and Forster, learn how to thread a small motif through your novel to highlight emotional themes, mark time, and anchor meaning without exposition.

🐇 Lesson 56: The absurd

Introduce the irrational into your novel to deepen realism and resonance. Draw from Camus, Kafka, and Vonnegut to explore characters in conflict with a meaningless world. Use contradiction, bathos, and surreal events to mirror existential truths. Give characters odd behaviors or false beliefs and unlock humor in tragedy. Absurdity lets your story bypass logic to process pain. Add a comic wrong note! Let the bizarre do the lifting.

✒️ Lesson 57: The full stop. Period.

You will study Raymond Carver’s radical economy of style to understand the emotional power of clean, unadorned prose. Learn how to end scenes and chapters with impact using the ‘dying fall’—a literary technique that creates an introspective pause in the reader. Use punctuation, silence, and space to invite the reader in. Then stop. Let them think.

🍋 Lesson 58: Backstory

Minimize backstory to keep momentum and preserve immersion. Avoid explanatory digressions and let the present action reveal character and history. If background must be included, use it sparingly, incompletely, and only when it advances the story. Prioritize mystery, pacing, and sensory detail over explanation. Draft a private inventory of essential backstory in your notebook—then leave it out.

🔀 Lesson 59: Transitions

Learn how to shift between timelines or perspectives while maintaining the progress of the story. Structure each timeline to serve the story and anchor transitions with mirrored images or echoed prose. Study structural examples—from Slaughterhouse-Five to Revolutionary Road—to master seamless cuts and purposeful contrast. Build dual narratives that interact meaningfully. Whether alternating chapters or blending timelines inside scenes, use each shift to reveal character truth and deepen the theme. Transitions must feel inevitable, not mechanical.‍

🏅 Lesson 60: The prize

Consider what success means for you and this story. Visualize the prize—awards, impact, personal fulfillment—and use that vision to fuel your writing. But weigh it against the price: solitude, vulnerability, and the need for validation. Don’t show or share your draft yet. Keep your vision intact and stay focused on momentum. Book a coaching session. Let the writing be its own reward.‍

Using the inside secrets of a Nobel Laureate, you’ll apply new masterstrokes to fulfill the promise of your story. Discover the deft and economical touches that give the reader those ‘aha’ moments, and see the proof on the page that you’re mastering the skills of the craft.
‍

🧘‍♂️ Lesson 61: Mastery

Enter The Enlightenment Phase by studying a master at work—Nobel Laureate, J.M. Coetzee. His novel Disgrace becomes your blueprint for serious fiction. Embrace slow, scrutinized craft. Discover moral sleight of hand, structural control, and linguistic precision. Learn how personal wreckage becomes literary gold. Through his example, start to treat your fiction as both the lighthouse and the rock using exposure, self-revelation, and sacrifice.‍

🤯 Lesson 62: Difficult questions

Learn from the painstaking process of J.M. Coetzee to embrace uncertainty. Discover how doubt, revision, and slow accumulation work for your craft. Writing isn’t about having answers—it’s about asking hard questions. Use notebooks to track your progress, explore your insecurities, and gather material.

🔪 Lesson 63: Self-destruction

J.M. Coetzee strips identity to its core in Disgrace, creating fiction through radical self-erasure. Explore the relationship between self-sacrifice and narrative power, where character and author collide in philosophical confrontation. See how the writing becomes an ethical act—an unflinching confrontation with shame. Writing at this level demands internal conflict. By witnessing Coetzee’s willingness to burn down the house of self, understand how fiction can become an act of creative destruction—yielding a story of brutal grace.‍

🏷️ Lesson 64: The title

Explore how a novel’s title encapsulates its magic, the agent of change. Study examples from literature that use eponym, image, juxtaposition, or reference. Test titles against your story’s meaning and evolution. Use this lesson to begin generating titles that capture the premise of your story at its core.‍

🩸 Lesson 65: The wound

Explore how personal loss fuels fiction. A wound—both authorial and fictional—drives a character’s compulsion. Understand how to write from suffering without sentimentality. Use this lesson to identify the wound in your own story and main character, to give your novel emotional integrity and transformative powers.

🌉 Lesson 66: The bridge

Revisit your opening sentence as your draft progresses—it should beckon the story’s end. Use your first line to seed paradox, establish theme, and set the reader’s expectations. Track how character and language evolve through re-drafts. Write a ten-word sentence that captures your protagonist’s dilemma.‍

👣 Lesson 67: Back and forth process

Embrace the messy motion of drafting—give yourself to the writing, then step back to question and refine. This lesson draws from J.M. Coetzee’s 17 drafts of Disgrace to show how great work emerges from doubt, persistence, and craft. Learn to navigate the discomfort of not knowing, and trust that taste and judgment are sharpened by failure. Use the first draft to explore freely—there’s time to look smart later.

⏳ Lesson 68: Present tension

Explore the dramatic force of the present tense. Learn how it creates instability, complicity, and immediacy by removing the safety of hindsight. Through examples like Disgrace and The Color Purple, see how present-tense narration drives moral urgency and places the reader inside the character’s crisis. If your prose feels flat, consider testing a tense change—even late in draft one. ‍

💻 Lesson 69: Poet and programmer

Write sentence by sentence with the dual precision of a programmer and the emotional depth of a poet. See how structure emerges from theme, and how rhythm becomes a literary device. Discover how prose can carry musicality, and how writing becomes a form of self-navigation. Build meaning and movement, advancing line by line, like code.‍

🕰️ Lesson 70: The chapter outline

Create a working chapter-by-chapter outline to clarify the structure and pacing of your novel. Use it to map intentions, identify gaps, and simplify where needed. Study Coetzee’s Disgrace for a model of formal, purpose-driven structure: 24 chapters, each self-contained, each building tension and meaning. Focus on progression and economy—state your purpose, fulfill it, and move on. Use the outline to track your story’s momentum and ensure every chapter earns its place.‍

🌿 Lesson 71: Let them live

Free your main character from backstory and let them step forward. The best characters contradict their traits, hold true and false beliefs, and surprise both writer and reader. Write with paradox. Leave room for ambiguity at the end, allowing your novel to cast a longer shadow.‍

🎭 Lesson 72: The point of tragedy

Examine how tragedy operates as a vehicle for truth. Learn Aristotle’s three essential components—hamartia, peripeteia, and anagnorisis. Understand how tragedy evokes catharsis, forces reckoning, and offers the writer a deeper path to meaning. Study the five-stage structure of tragic narrative. Discover how writing reveals what you want to say—and how tragedy delivers truth through emotional disasters.

💖 Lesson 73: What is good?

Explore how great fiction transcends simple notions of good and bad to confront moral ambiguity. Using Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee, learn how visionary states like hypnagogia deepen your protagonist’s self-awareness and enrich narrative meaning. Trace David Lurie’s arc from egotism to humility, observing how memory, vision, and anagnorisis (tragic recognition) shape his internal reckoning. Discover how grace—not goodness—offers the novelist a more radical aim.‍

❓ Lesson 74: The big question

Refine the question driving your story by identifying what the reader is reading to find out—whether it’s whodunnit, will they get the prize, or who is this person really? Study how this central question can shift mid-novel, as in The Talented Mr. Ripley or Disgrace, evolving as character, setting, or theme develops. Use the question as both narrative engine and moral lens. Establish it clearly, revisit it often, and make it deliver personal transformation for both character and reader.

📘 Lesson 75: The story so far

Review the full arc of your novel and draft a working synopsis that captures your story’s potential without getting bogged down in imperfections. Use this moment to regain purpose and re-engage with your characters’ journey. If needed, book a coaching session and update The Plan. This is your opportunity to reframe the work, strengthen the through line, and prepare to carry the story forward to the end.

Combine the key elements of storytelling and see theme, character, dramatic irony, narrative arc, and subplots working in harmony for a satisfying ending. Get advice on taking this draft to publishing standards. And then celebrate! You’ll have a manuscript in your hands and a story readers will love.
‍

🏠 Lesson 76: Welcome home

Review the final structure and make adjustments to ensure the story is sound and grounded. Contrast your main character’s initial façade with their new self to clarify the novel’s arc. Use dream imagery and metaphor to explore how personal symbols, memories, and meaning can enrich your story. Prepare a sketch of the ending. Use the subconscious signals—night thoughts and dreams—that will now help finish what you’ve built. The home stretch begins here.‍

🪜 Lesson 77: Let’s build

Assign your existing chapters to the Five Fs framework rooted in classical tragic structure. Use this scaffolding to make sense of your draft and prepare it for a strong finish. Reorder material, if needed, to clarify escalation and transformation. Whether your chapters are short or long, give each a place in this sequence. Begin shaping your ending. This final phase is about making the book inhabitable—for you and your reader.

🏛️ Lesson 78: The house of magic

Use music and hypnagogic recall to explore each emotional stage of the story as a space: a messy front room, a closed bedroom, a blocked escape, a chaotic kitchen, and a bathroom of reckoning. Revise your Plan and schedule a coaching session to align story shape and character change as you approach the ending.

🛁 Lesson 79: The rooms

Plan your chapters as spaces within the larger structure of the house of your novel. Avoid episodic drift by ensuring that every chapter flows naturally from the last. Cut anything that doesn’t build both the psychological interior and action-oriented exterior.‍

🎨 Lesson 80: Interior style

Raise the standard of your writing by setting a higher bar for every sentence. Evaluate every line: is it necessary, true, distinctive? Create contrast: plain-speaking can sharpen the impact of strangeness. Build toward beauty and power by making each sentence count.

🏺 Lesson 81: Ornaments

Lend your novel the personal, the things that bring you comfort and joy—objects, sounds, and memories that mean something you. Scatter these ‘ornaments’ through your characters’ homes, names, and dialogue to build a world that feels lived-in. Choose names with meaning, add leitmotifs with private significance, and shape a place rich with emotional texture.

🧳 Lesson 82: The attic

Learn how to use memory as a narrative space distinct from backstory—the ‘attic.’ This is where you and your main character explore forgotten emotions and formative impressions. Use this mental storehouse to create atmospheric revelations that unfold in real time. The attic holds what’s unsaid. Return to it in moments of reckoning or reflection, and draw from its contents to deepen intimacy in pivotal scenes.‍

🧼 Lesson 83: Housekeeping

Expect messy days—when life disruptions knock you off track. Learn how to recover from derailment without spiraling. Use your notebook to make quick notes instead of forcing bad writing. Trust your original Plan and cut what doesn’t serve. Avoid writing about real-life grudges—they destabilize tone. Prioritize stability, repetition, and time over novelty. Build a quiet, protective routine around your process. Keep the novel safe, warm, and clean from inner sabotage.‍

🛏️ Lesson 84: And so to bed

Craft an ending that opens, rather than closes, a window. Examine famous last lines that spark mystery, and understand how a question (rather than plot closure) becomes your final gesture. This lesson encourages a subtle tying of threads, not a tidy bow—space for reflection and peace for the protagonist. Reflect on your own season as a writer, and let the novel go when the ideas stop coming. Complete your draft knowing it’s whole—for now.

🪑 Lesson 85: Home alone

Writing reveals more than it tells—what you’ve put on the page may expose more of you than intended, even behind fictional distance. Don’t seek outside opinions yet. Stay inside the work. Keep the mystery intact. Discover what this draft says about you, and decide how far into yourself you’ve truly gone. Resist the urge to share. The story has found its voice—and you may need to sit with it.‍

🚑 Lesson 86: First aid kit

Receive your collection of best writing tips from master writers. Use these as a personal survival guide for when the doubt creeps in. Explore the complete set of insights from published authors at The Novelry. Discover what they unanimously agree matters most. This lesson is a writer’s emergency kit for staying the course and finishing strong.‍

🏁 Lesson 87: Leaving home

Pause before editing. Set the manuscript aside for at least a month to gain the distance required for ruthless revision. Use that space to sharpen your judgment, stay curious, and strengthen insight. Then, revise with attention to your novel’s opening. Is the dilemma clear? Is the compulsion strong? Does it reflect the theme and arc? Make sure the story arises from character, offers transformation, and delivers what the reader needs.

📔 Lesson 88: The second draft

Step back for a month before beginning your second draft. Use the break to read recent novels in your genre, experiment with ‘sideways writing,’ and sharpen your hook. Revisit your story with distance, ready to reshape it with clear eyes. Draft a revision plan—consider chapter structure, themes, and stakes. Prepare for The Big Edit, where you’ll receive expert editorial support to transform your draft into a submission-ready novel. ‍

🏆 Lesson 89: Success

Define success on your own terms before seeking it in publishing. Discover how to stay grounded through setbacks, resist the lure of fame, and preserve your joy in writing. Learn to process rejection without ego, and build resilience with humility and kindness. Find inspiration in James Baldwin’s philosophy. Prepare for revision with The Big Edit and know that real success lies in loving the life and work of a writer—and you’ve got that, and a killer process, in the bag!‍

🎉 Lesson 90: Congratulations!

Celebrate! You’ve built the habit, learned the craft, and shaped a novel only you could write. Acknowledge the discipline it took to get here. Download your certificate, share the news, and put your feet up. This milestone is now a happy and significant moment in your new life as a writer, writing.

Plus genre-specific lessons, mini courses in memoir and children’s fiction, and resources.

Authors mentioned in the course include: Jane Austen, Donna Tartt, Kazuo Ishiguro, Stephen King, Raymond Chandler, Patricia Highsmith, Daphne du Maurier, Gillian Flynn, George Saunders, Kurt Vonnegut, Shirley Jackson, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Rachel Cusk, Sally Rooney, Ian McEwan, Emily Brontë, Zadie Smith, Toni Morrison, Jean Rhys, Carson McCullers, Charles Dickens, Agatha Christie, Ernest Hemingway.

Your course certificate

The Big Edit Class

Revise and polish your manuscript to the highest publishing standards, with in-depth feedback from your professional book editor, and management of the literary submission process.

Lessons: 50 (1-hour each)

2 x professional editorial sessions

Go from writer to author with a clear, strategic roadmap, practical tools, smart systems, and a new publishing-ready mindset shift. Get a clear editorial roadmap and a structured revision process designed to take a manuscript to submission standard. The Big Edit is designed to save you drafts by front-loading strategic story development.
‍

👋 Lesson 1: Welcome to The Big Edit

It’s time to commit to working in longer, focused sessions to get the best from this new draft. Discover when to seek feedback, how to use it, and what it takes to prepare a pitch-perfect submission. Learn how to work with input from editors who’ve acquired books for the Big Five houses. Start to raise your expectations of your own work—this is where you stop writing for yourself and start shaping a novel for publication.

👓 Lesson 2: Becoming the reader

Look at your manuscript through a reader’s eyes. Learn when to step away from your draft and how to spot what’s working (and what isn’t). Read other books strategically now, benchmarking your novel against successful titles in your genre. Take ownership of your book as a product for readers, not just a personal expression.‍

🧹 Lesson 3: Order! Order!

Clean your workspace, block out deep-focus time, and approach your story with calm logic. Use our prompts to uncover what’s great, what’s flawed, and what’s missing. Go back to the reason you started writing it, and remember what makes it truly lovable. Now, reframe your novel as a compelling, structured product—ready to earn its place on a bookshelf.

📄 Lesson 4: The smart manuscript

Format like a pro. This lesson shows you how to prepare a professional publishing manuscript. Follow industry-standard conventions for font, spacing, margins, paragraphing, punctuation, dialogue, and chapter layout. Learn the rules for page numbers, scene breaks, italics, title pages, and more, and pack a few apps and tools recommended by the authors and editors on our team.

🗂️ Lesson 5: Set up your folder

Build an efficient editing workspace using apps like Scrivener, Dabble, or a structured folder system. Set up scenes for easy navigation and restructuring. Learn to use timeline tools, plot grids, tagging, and version control. Organize research, track characters, and filter scenes by focus. Move easily between overview and detail with version tracking, scene reordering, visual plot grids, and distraction-free modes. But if tech’s not your thing, we have a workaround or two!

🩺 Lesson 6: Your check-up

Take stock of your mindset, your material, and your role as a storyteller. Let’s make sure you’re mentally and practically prepared to begin editing. Reflect on the story you’re telling: is it yours to tell, and are you equipped to do it justice? Let’s get you in great shape to nail it. You’ll complete a full pre-edit checklist, taking a moment to re-evaluate your story’s origins and your role as its author.

You’ll develop your elevator pitch, story theme, structure, narrative arc, character development, midpoint, and more to work toward a chapter outline and a (pain-free) synopsis. Then it’s time for your first review session with a professional editor.
‍

🧱 Lesson 7: What is story? A reminder

A story centers on change for the main character. Learn to identify the protagonist (who undergoes the greatest transformation), distinguish them from the hero (who may not change), and understand the role of the narrator (who witnesses the events). Explore how plot, setting, character, and time interact to shape narrative.

🗂️ Lesson 8: Genre glossary

Genre shapes reader expectations and drives market positioning. Identify your novel’s primary genre, even if it blends several, and explore the characteristics, conventions, and subgenres of major categories, including romance, thriller, fantasy, science fiction, literary, YA, MG, memoir, and more. Avoid common genre-specific missteps and get to work with your comparable titles.

🏷️ Lesson 9: The title

First, identify the agent of change in your novel—the moment, event, place, or character after which nothing is the same. Use this insight to generate title options that reflect your book’s core purpose and shape. Test your shortlist for market fit and memorability.‍

🧲 Lesson 10: The hook or one-line pitch

Craft a concise, compelling sentence that captures your novel’s premise. Use it to shape your edit, excite literary agents, and fuel the entire publishing chain from pitch to press. Focus on the stakes of the story. Explore proven structures for hooks—whether character-driven, dilemma-based, high-concept, or speculative—to supercharge your submission.

🧠 Lesson 11: An agent on the pitch or hook

Refine your working hook using real-world insight from top literary agents, who break a strong pitch down into three essentials: character, setting, and conflict—without relying on gimmicks or overworked language. With examples from successful submissions, you’ll see how a powerful hook opens doors.

✋ Lesson 12: The Five Fs

Develop your best story structure using The Novelry’s Five Fs®. Learn how to apply this story spine to any genre or form, identifying key turning points that expose your protagonist’s arc—from internal flaw to final reckoning.

🎸 Lesson 13: A bonus lesson from ‘The Boss’

See The Five Fs in action through a Bruce Springsteen ballad. In this lesson, you’ll track a full narrative arc—from Flaw to Facing It—within the structure of a single song. Learn how emotional stakes and character change can be packed into a tight space with a masterclass.

🖼️ Lesson 14: The big picture

Learn how filmmakers and novelists—from Ridley Scott to Nabokov—use scene-mapping tools like index cards, Post-its, and storyboards to visualize a story. Pinpoint your six major scenes and plot the beats between them. Use free tools to build a visual storyboard for your narrative. See your novel at a glance as a sequence of unmissable scenes.

🧮 Lesson 15: Approaches to plotting

Explore multiple methods to structure your novel. In this lesson, you’ll build a flexible working synopsis by combining The Five Fs with other plotting frameworks to choose the plotting tools that best serve your story.

🎭 Lesson 16: Theme and plot

Get character, theme, and conflict working together. Frame your theme as a potent argument—with two sides in vehement conflict—to drive character change and narrative pace. Test your theme by casting for and against it.

⏳ Lesson 17: The midpoint

Locate the point of no return in your novel—the moment when everything changes. Explore classic midpoint examples from The Godfather, Pride and Prejudice, Disgrace, The Great Gatsby, and more. Use our Kleenex Test and reverse-engineering techniques to engineer the axis of change in your story.

📄 Lesson 18: Synopsis

Write a professional, plot-driven synopsis that includes your main characters, central conflict, and the story arc. Discover what agents expect: no blurb-style teasers, no withholding of twists, and no indulgent prose.

🧵 Lesson 19: Synopsis workshop

Learn how to spot gaps in structure, weak stakes, and unclear character arcs. Rewrite your synopsis with practical tips from the team to showcase your story.

📚 Lesson 20: The chapter outline

Build a chapter-by-chapter outline using our tool to track pacing, character arcs, word counts, recurring motifs, cliffhangers, and key details like dates and locations. This is your map from first draft to finished manuscript.

👥 Lesson 21: Casting

Strengthen your cast by mapping the main players along the ‘rope of theme.’ Learn the Four Types Method from The Novelry. Study examples from major works, and learn how to anchor each character through associations, action, and distinguishing detail.

🕸️ Lesson 22: Character mapping and cast relationships

Identify your core team—around five to fifteen players—and ensure each earns their place in the story. Study the web of relationships through the lens of reciprocal wants and needs, with emphasis on dramatic tension, conflict, and moral push-pull. Create a visual map of your cast to reveal the power dynamics.

🧨 Lesson 23: Character agency

Give characters agency by anchoring their actions in their hidden desires. Explore how deprivation creates compulsion, and how to empower the most disempowered characters. Use practical tools like our ‘Character Agency Ladder’ to drive agency for more passive leads.

✊ Lesson 24: Getting to grips with the material

Update your outline, then interrogate every chapter: Why here, why now? What changes? Use the downloadable template to track chapter length, word count, and story flow. Learn the principles of effective chaptering—when to enter and exit scenes, how to use location shifts, and where to place cliffhangers. Cut weak subplots and merge flat characters; every scene must earn its place.

👥 Lesson 25: Meet the editorial team

Get ready to hand over your story for expert review from your Big Five editor at The Novelry. Understand the difference between structural edits, line edits, and what to expect from each.

🛑 Lesson 26: Let’s check The Plan

Prepare for your Big Edit First Session. Submit The Plan, your synopsis, your chapter outline, and (optionally) your prose to your editor. This is your first opportunity to see your story the way a publishing editor would see it.‍

You’ll interrogate your plot and characters, rework chapters, drill down into sentence structure and word choice, and eliminate grammatical, spelling, and punctuation errors line-by-line. You’ll learn how to apply our unique technique for advanced prose skills: Lucid Compression®.

Next, it’s time for feedback on your writing from beta readers in our online community.
‍

🕵️ Lesson 27: Interrogation

Begin your second draft by asking the hard questions, moving from ‘what if’ and ‘what next’ to ‘so what.’ Cut what no longer serves. Reorder scenes for impact. Use our unique interrogation framework to examine each decision: Does the hook honor the title? Does each word earn its place? Tighten and recommit to the reader’s journey.

📖 Lesson 28: The prologue

Whether or not you plan to include one, use a prologue to pinpoint your story’s central question, raise the stakes, establish setting, and ring the change from the start. Learn what makes a prologue work: urgency, intrigue, and theme in motion. By the end, you’ll have fresh insight into what makes your story matter.

✍️ Lesson 29: The first chapter

Know what to deliver up front: the main character, the setting, the problem, and the emotional tone. Use our unique ‘Thing One/Thing Two’ structure to show both the surface conflict and the deeper story problem. Study how standout openings introduce the voice, and both the status quo and disruption.

🚫 Lesson 30: The cardinal sins

Root out the most common mistakes that weaken a manuscript. Tackle the big ones: excessive backstory, telling instead of showing, weak world-building, and overuse of adverbs. Replace flat exposition with dramatic action, build emotional depth through character behavior, and let the reader do some of the work!

✨ Lesson 31: The first sentence

Craft a first sentence that signals change, establishes the narrative voice, and primes the reader for what’s to come. Study examples across genres to understand what makes a first line unforgettable.

🗣️ Lesson 32: Voice and perspective

Explore the options of first and third person to select the right narrative distance for your story. Use practical tools like colour-coded POV maps to track multiple perspectives across your chapters. By the end, you’ll have a firmer grasp of how your characters see their world and how best to tell their story.

🎬 Lesson 33: Structuring a scene

Decide who’s present, whose point of view we follow, and where it’s best set to bring the drama! Use contrast, subtext, and physical movement to generate tension. Study examples from great novels and apply techniques like ‘get in late, leave early.’

🧨 Lesson 34: Creating suspense

Pair actions with their opposites, repeat trigger words to build unease, and escalate danger through your chapter sequence. Use short chapters, mannered dialogue, and deliberately misleading cues to create a story the reader can’t look away from. Study how famous novels use sleight of hand, flashbacks, and forward hints to keep secrets just out of reach.

‍🗨️ Lesson 35: Dialogue

Craft true-to-life dialogue that drives story, reveals conflict, and sounds natural. Give each character an agenda, avoid exposition dumps, leave things unsaid. Study the importance of varied syntax and voice differentiation.

💉 Lesson 36: A cure for overwriting

Strip your prose of clutter. Diagnose and treat overwriting—the most common weakness in early drafts. Spot symptoms like didactic prose, clichéd expressions, overuse of adverbs, and redundant descriptions. Use our editorial checklist to trim sentence length, cut filler, and refine and define your style. Study a full line-edit example, with tracked changes and genre-specific notes.

🧪 Lesson 37: Lucid Compression

Refine your prose using The Novelry’s signature technique: Lucid Compression®. Edit your opening for maximum sensory impact and credibility with our secret sauce: confessionary detail, humble specifics, technical precision, local texture, oxymoronic imagery, physical disturbance, and tonal counterpoints. Use it to create immersive openings that win awards!

✂️ Lesson 38: Sentences

Hit style at the sentence level! In this lesson, you’ll cut clichés, drop filler, and aim for muscular, memorable lines. Learn why shorter sentences land harder. Study sentence strategies from the masters to strip those long-winded lines down to get to the heart of the matter.

🧱 Lesson 39: The word

Study how repetition, sound, and subliminal patterning (from The Great Gatsby) shape a story word by word. Learn how to identify and replace ‘weasel’ words—those filler terms that dull your prose. Explore word choice as a tool of seduction, creating sensory effects. Then begin to ‘code’ your novel’s DNA.

🔡 Lesson 40: Punctuation

Use punctuation to clue the reader into your behind-the-scenes game. Learn how line-level choices like the full stop, comma, dash, ellipsis, colon, and semicolon operate as instructions to the reader as to what to think and feel.

📚 Lesson 41: Thesaurus

Use this tool to upskill your prose. Explore the value of etymology and historical thesauruses when writing speculative or period fiction. See how authors like Samantha Shannon use constructed language to deepen immersion and world-building.

✅ Lesson 42: Last checks

Prepare a submission-ready manuscript from typeface and margins to scene breaks and title page formatting. Then, revisit every chapter with fresh eyes: does each one deliver change, purpose, and tension? Reflect on your ending—has your protagonist truly driven the outcome of this story? Use this final sweep to take the novel to submission-ready status.

🟠 Lesson 43: Get feedback

Assess whether your manuscript is ready for feedback and explore our three routes: peer critique, a one-on-one editorial session, or a full assessment. Learn how to seek and process feedback effectively—who to ask, when to ask, what to share (and not share), and how to apply criticism constructively. Bring on the readers! You’re ready!

Your second session with a professional book editor will involve reviewing your pitch letter, synopsis, and first three chapters, and making a plan to enter the publishing process via literary agency representation.
‍

🎯 Lesson 44: Pitch perfect

Craft a market-ready pitch and position your novel by identifying its USP, audience, and comp titles. Use examples from bestselling modern novels like Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, then apply the structured five-part framework to write your own market-ready pitch.

🪶 Lesson 45: The story

This is your back-of-book copy: concise, enticing, and focused only on the beginning of the novel. Learn how to tease the central hook and introduce your protagonist in just a few lines, with the stakes all there and a clear narrative question.

📈 Lesson 46: The market

Understand where your book sits in the current publishing landscape. Identify smart, commercially viable comparison titles—not just for creative guidance, but as essential sales tools. Study how publishers, editors, and sales reps use these comps to assess market potential, pitch to retailers, and drive acquisition decisions.

🧳 Lesson 47: Agents

Build a longlist and shortlist, and prepare a standard submission package—query letter, synopsis, and first three chapters—ready to adapt per agent guidelines. Apply for The Novelry’s bespoke submission service or learn how to navigate independent querying, from tracking responses to interpreting feedback and handling rejection. Assess offers, meet agents, and make the best decision for your long-term writing career.

📣 Lesson 48: Publicity and promotion—after the deal!

Audit your online presence before submission, approach social media strategically, and understand your role in the publishing process after the deal. You’ll explore how campaigns are structured—from proofs to press—and what to expect from developmental edits through to cover design, marketing, and launch.

🧭 Lesson 49: Career advice

Work productively with your publishing team, and manage deadlines with care. Understand the evolving role of the author in marketing and publicity, and make informed choices about your online presence. Build your writing community, attend events, and support peers generously. Learn how to handle reviews, and why your sales record doesn’t define your future.

🧠 Lesson 50: The final stages

Diagnose late-stage problems in your manuscript before submission. Use four advanced tests to assess your novel’s readiness: clarity of concept, emotional investment, cast depth, and quality of line-level execution.

🟢 Lesson 51: Are you really ready?

Use the editorial video briefing to review what a strong submission looks like, then prepare your materials: query letter, synopsis, and first three chapters (no more than 30 pages), formatted to industry standards. It’s time to submit for your Big Edit Second Session.

🛤️ Lesson 52: Not there yet?

If your submission isn’t ready, use editorial feedback as a springboard—not a verdict. Reconnect with the original spark of your story, or start afresh if the love has faded. Detach your self-worth from publishing outcomes, and root it in the creative act itself.

🏁 Lesson 53: Ready? Let’s go!

Celebrate the finish line. Whether you’re submitting to agents or marking a personal milestone, reaching the end of The Big Edit is a major achievement. You’ve done what many never do: you finished a novel. Own it. Share it. Rejoice in it. And if you’re ready to submit, know that we’re behind you all the way and you will have access to the very best literary agencies in the world.

‍

Books referenced in The Big Edit

Structural examples include Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier, Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins, My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite, Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë, The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger, Never Let Me Go and The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro, The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, and The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst.

To explore voice and rhythm, the course encourages close reading of Cathedral by Raymond Carver, the Collected Stories of Anton Chekhov, The Quiet American by Graham Greene, The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford, and Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee.

For market awareness and stylistic benchmarks, we work from contemporary titles such as Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin, Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty, The Paper Palace by Miranda Cowley Heller, The Midnight Library by Matt Haig, and Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman.

The Ultimate Manuscript Assessment

Enhance your manuscript’s quality and marketability with marked-up revisions from bestselling publishing editors. And a clear plan for submission to literary agents.

Lessons: None – this is a dedicated service, rather than a class

1 x professional editor debrief session

Recommendation to Leading Literary Agents

Lessons: None – this is a dedicated service, rather than a class

‘You don’t make a decision about being a writer. The choice is how good you are going to be at it and how hard you are going to work.’

—Philipp Meyer

Our coaching team

Their books have hit the New York Times and Sunday Times bestseller lists and have been adapted for screen and optioned for major motion pictures.

Ian Green

Sunday Times bestselling fantasy and science fiction author

The pathway to publishing

A springboard to success

Reasons not to get off to a good start on your next adventure

I don’t have a moment tolose

I’ve done a course or twobefore, you know

I want to write my way, not for the ‘market’

‘We’ll bypass the basics, cut the filler, and skip straight to the expert insights that will help you create a kick-ass story. You’ll learn some magic tricks to make your process leaner and keener.’

Take absolute control of your story to write a brilliant novel with expert one-on-one guidance, from blank page to book deal

The Fast-Track Novel

The Advanced Outline Class

Welcome

The Vital Organs

The Working Plan

The Depth Chargers

Magic and Mastery

The Ninety Day Novel Class

The Inspiration and Preparation Phase

The Construction Phase

The Swim Phase

The Heat Phase

The Enlightenment Phase

The Home Phase

The Big Edit Class

Turning Pro

The Developmental Edit

Line Edit

The Submission Process

The Ultimate Manuscript Assessment

Next Steps Toward Publishing

Meeting with the Editor

A Marked-Up Manuscript

Structural Development

The Pitch

Recommendation to Leading Literary Agents

Why Do You Need a Literary Agent?

Understanding Agent Listings

Finding the Right Agent

Demystifying the Publishing Industry

How We Can Help

‘You don’t make a decision about being a writer. The choice is how good you are going to be at it and how hard you are going to work.’

Our coaching team

Ian Green

Andrea Stewart

Piers Torday

Clare Mackintosh

Bea Fitzgerald

Anissa Gray

Evie Wyld

Heather Webb

Libby Page

Tasha Suri

Dhonielle Clayton

Melanie Conklin

L.R. Lam

Kate Riordan

Katie Khan

Gina Sorell

Mahsuda Snaith

Tara Conklin

Colleen Oakley

Amanda Reynolds

Emylia Hall

Urban Waite

Ella McLeod

Alice Kuipers

Kate Dylan

David Solomons

Lesley Kara

Kate Davies

Your professional publishing editors

Tash Barsby

Josie Humber

Elizabeth Kulhanek

Emily Kitchin

Lizzy Goudsmit Kay

Craig Leyenaar

Krystle Appiah

Nic Caws

Gillian Holmes

Sadé Omeje

I don’t have a moment to
lose

I’ve done a course or two
before, you know