What you'll learn
- Edit your novel, story or screenplay considering the whole work, rather than just the sum of its parts.
- Consider the role of characters, including protagonists, antagonists and supporting characters.
- Learn about central mysteries and how they can compel your readers forward.
- Chart the flow of your story.
- Learn how to power up tension.
- Learn how themes unite stories.
- Create compelling context to add drama and spice to your story.
- Use tables, excel spreadsheets, charts, and graphs to see your story afresh.
- Discover resources to help you with spelling, grammar and consistency issues.
Requirements
- You’ll need a computer or a pen and paper.
- Your novel, story or screenplay.
- Knowledge of writing basics.
- An open mind to think about writing in a holistic way.
Description
Like every healthy ecology a story needs to work as a whole, not just the sum of its parts. Does your fiction world have a working ecology? Do its parts work together? Or do its characters overwhelm? Do all parts support each other, or do they each vie for power? How can you see the work afresh?
This course will enable you to become a more effective editor of your own fiction work. It will help you visualise a novel/screenplay/story holistically – as one grand ecology – each element reliant on another. If part of your story doesn't support the life of the whole, out it goes!
The Ecology of Novels includes:
- Videos
- Reading materials
- Inspirational exercises
- Case studies
- Charts, spreadsheets, graphs
- Links to extra resources (for swats only)
Much as a new painter would stroll the Louvre studying the great master painters, as a writer you should be examining the best storytellers. So in this course we’ll be ambling through the literary Louvre, paying our respects to creative greats like JRR Tolkien, George Lucas, Harper Lee, William Shakespeare and many more.
Plenty of courses teach the basics of story writing.
Few teach writers how to write brilliant – and connected – prose. Drafting leads to mastery. But only if you know where to look. Led by a Senior Editor with almost 20 years of editing experience this course points you in the right direction.
Who this course is for:
- Authors who have written at least one draft of their novel, story, or screenplay.
- Writers who understand the basics of fiction: characterisation, themes, context, etc. (This course goes beyond the basics to cohesive story design.)
- Authors who are stuck in the drafting phase of their work.
- Writers wanting to take their work to the next level.
- People who like to plan before they write.
- People who would like to edit fiction, and know the basic rules of writing a holistic story.
Instructor
- 4.4 Instructor Rating
- 56 Reviews
- 556 Students
- 1 Course
Edited over 100 fiction and non-fiction titles, including Joint-winner of the Prime Minister's Prize for Australian History; Winner of The Douglas Stewart Prize at the NSW Premier's Literary Awards; Winner of the Non-fiction Prize Queensland Premier's Literary Awards; Shortlisted for The Age Book of the Year Award, winners of The Australian Awards for Excellence in Educational Publishing and various self-publishing awards.
Writer of the popular column 'Writing Bootcamp', in Arts Hub magazine.
Specialties: Copyediting, proofreading, writing, structural editing.