Mondays, January 22 - April 15, 2024 5:30- 7:30pm Pacific Time 8:30 to 10:30pm Eastern Time $1999 Writing sample required Class size: 6 students: Class is full
The traditional fiction workshop can be wonderful for short story writers, but it often fails the novelist. To give the most useful feedback possible on a novel manuscript, a draft reader needs to consider the book as a whole. Unfortunately, the page-count limits of most workshops only allow writers to submit small sections for critique. The resulting feedback can offer insight into language, pacing of individual scenes, character development across a short span, and the expectations created in the reader for what’s to come. This is all useful information, but it leaves out some very important questions: How does this novel work as a complete, unique project? What is the structure of the thing as a whole, and how is that working? Does the plot hold together? Do the characters change or deliberately not change in a way that feels satisfying and earned? A novelist needs to know these things (among others) and no reader—no matter how smart and dedicated—can form an opinion on them by reading two 15-page excerpts.
As a working novelist and a creative writing instructor, I’ve long wanted to offer a novel workshop that would allow my students to get feedback on their entire manuscripts. This is that class, designed for the serious novelist who wants to engage deeply with their own and their classmates’ novels.
This course is intended for students who have a completed draft of a novel. All genres of fiction are welcome. Each class will begin with a craft lecture, followed by workshop. Only one person will workshop each week, so that we can dedicate our full attention as a group to one novel at a time. Because students will be committing to reading up to 200 pages of student work each week, there will not be additional readings assigned.
Workshops will take place via Zoom. Students will turn in up to 200 pages for workshop each week.
This will not be a silent workshop, where the author sits passively and receives feedback in silence. I invite my students to be as actively engaged in their own workshops as feels useful to them. They’re free to ask and answer questions, redirect, clarify, or brainstorm possible solutions as we discuss their work. They are also free to sit and receive the feedback in silence, if that is what feels right to them.
Students will meet individually with me via Zoom following each of their workshops for any questions they might have, to process the feedback received, and to make a plan for revisions.
The class is now full.
This class is by application only. To apply, please send a 25-page excerpt from the novel you intend to workshop to cari@cariluna.com
Questions? Want more information? You can email me at cari@cariluna for that, too.
–