Unthank Books – How to Write a Novel

Having had a case of the wobbles mid-way through rewriting my book, I did what I often do when I’m panicked about something, I enrolled on a course. Unthank Books, based over in Norfolk, publish fiction and teach creative writing. A three month online course on something called How to Write a Novel looked just the thing for me. I applied.

First up, an email arrived from the tutor, Stephen Carver, telling me a little more about the course. It was friendly and welcoming, and reinforced my thought that this was a good idea. This particular course was billed as ‘intermediate’ and could apply to anyone, at any stage of writing a novel.

The action for each course takes place through the discussion board – a forum post for each exercise as we worked through the modules. It started off with some basics, drilling into everyone the importance of writing every day, and the modules delved into character, plot, place, dialogue, followed by pacing and point of view. The final module was about publicity and publishing – including feedback on agent letters and synopses. Each module featured a series of exercises to complete, some of these were posting up scenes from your work in progress, some were looking at structure and breaking down what kind of a writer we all were. We could experiment with point of view, try to break down our books to their bare bones and talk about setting – all in a  supportive way. And finally we had an assignment – the opening 10,000 words of our novel – which was critiqued for improvements.

There weren’t many of us on the course which enabled us to connect nicely on the forum discussion boards. (We have subsequently set up a secret Facebook group to continue discussions.) Feedback from anyone is always good, if you’re prone to self-deprecation as I am, and a bunch of supportive fellow writers who are wrestling with a whole range of other literary endeavours was really helpful. But of course, these courses are all about the quality of the teaching and to have a professional reader and editor to critique parts of the novel was the best thing about it and a real boost to my writing confidence.

Steve’s points were constructive, pinpointed the issues or stumbling blocks that I needed to think through but did all this with so much encouragement that I started to believe that I could do it. And more than that, that this might not be a vanity project. I know the story is good, but was worrying about my capacity to do it justice. This course has made things much better.

You sit at your desk, before or after work, you have scraps of paper, notebooks and index cards. You pin up research to inspire you and you get stuck in. And then you read something by another writer and the doubt creeps in. By the time you’ve gone back and forth on a scene you have no idea any more what’s good and what’s not. My writing group is helpful and supportive but they’re all incredibly busy. This course has given me a better idea of what I still need to do and told me that I can feel proud of what I’ve managed so far.

Rewrite number two is well on its way now. Thanks Steve!

Unthank School of Writing runs a number of courses – you can find out all the details here.