Move from Outline to Draft Writing

About the Course

Have you created an outline and now feel prepared to start writing your novel? Or have you started a novel draft only to find your interest or confidence waning? In this course, UBC School of Creative Writing's award-winning professors Nancy Lee and Annabel Lyon introduce the essential fiction craft toolbox for writers struggling with the common hurdles of first drafts. 

Reaching your goal of writing a novel requires an understanding of fiction’s deeper mechanics and a familiarity with the specific craft elements that will help translate your creativity and imagination into compelling paragraphs, scenes and chapters. 

Through writing exercises aimed at developing new skills, concrete examples from published novels, and craft discussion with fellow writers, you will broaden your knowledge of fiction craft as we explore creating memorable characters, the art of scene design, tactics for managing unwieldy plots and steps for writing layered and meaningful dialogue. 

Whether you’re beginning your novel draft or nearing the end, this course is a unique opportunity to learn the essentials of strong fiction writing from award-winning authors and writing teachers sharing their proven methods and approaches. The course is recommended for professional and aspiring writers, writing groups, those participating in NaNoWriMo, teachers and anyone who has a novel in progress. 

During the course, you'll work intensively on your own creative project and discuss the assignments and your own process with your fellow writers. Faculty will be available to answer learner questions during a regular Q&A podcast. 

Whether you’re seeking literary fame or working on a project to share with family and friends, this course offers the tools and skills necessary to get you to the end of your novel draft.

What You'll Learn

• The elements of complex, dimensional characters 
• How to craft believable dramatic dialogue 
• Tactics for managing complicated plots 
• The demands of high emotional stakes from scene level to story level 
• Strategies for seeing your draft through to completion

Format

This course is 100% online, asynchronous, and not for credit. Each week for six weeks, we'll release a new module of material full of insightful lectures, assignments, and video interviews with working writers. You'll have the chance to discuss the assignments with your fellow students, but we won't be grading or giving feedback on your writing - this course is all about learning craft: everything is designed to give you the tools to continue on your own, long after the course ends.

We'll have a TA helping out in the discussions, and the instructors will answer your questions during the course in a lively Q&A podcast format.

 Length: 6 weeks | 4-6 hours per week

 Instructors: Nancy Lee and Annabel Lyon

 Genre: Fiction 

Level: Beginner to intermediate. Open to anyone in the world - no university registration required.

 Prerequisite:  None. We recommend you take the three courses in this series in order: Stucture & Outline, then Writing the Draft, and finishing with Edit & Revise. However, it's not a requirement.

Syllabus

How to Write a Novel: Writing the Draft - Course Syllabus (PDF)

About the Instructors

Nancy Lee is the award-winning author of two works of fiction, Dead Girls and The Age, and a poetry collection, What Hurts Going Down (McClelland & Stewart, 2020). Her books have been published in the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the Netherlands, and her work most recently appeared in Ploughshares, The Adroit Journal, The Puritan and Arc Poetry Magazine. Nancy has served as Writer-in-Residence for Historic Joy Kogawa House, the city of Richmond, and the city of Vincennes, France.

Annabel Lyon's first novel, The Golden Mean, was published in 2009 and won the Rogers Writers Trust Fiction Prize. It was a Canadian bestseller and was published in multiple countries and languages. Her second novel, The Sweet Girl, a companion to The Golden Mean, was published in 2012. Imagining Ancient Women, the text of her Henry Kreisel Memorial Lecture, was published the same year. She won the Engel-Findley award for a body of work in 2015. Her latest novel, Consent, was published in 2020.

Questions?

You can contact us at: crwr.noncredit@ubc.ca

Some frequent questions:

Do I need to complete "How to Write a Novel: Structure and Outline" to take this course? 

No. As long as you are in the process of writing a novel, this course will be valuable to you. Of course, we strongly recommend starting with our Structure & Outline course, or your own outline, as your novel writing process will be much more efficient, but it’s not required.

This is an entirely new course, designed for a wide audience of writers. Nancy and Annabel have years of experience teaching the art of fiction writing to undergraduate and graduate university students and created this course as the novel writing series they'd always wanted to take themselves.

How often is this course offered?

This course is normally offered twice per year, in Spring and Fall. You can find the schedule of upcoming courses on the main Creative Writing page on this site.  

What are the other courses in the series?

How to Write a Novel: Structure and Outline explores the core elements of fiction writing necessary to build an outline: a blueprint for a successful draft of your novel. How to Write a Novel: Edit and Revise is suitable for students who have completed a full draft of their novel.

How long will I have access to the course materials?

You should have indefinite access to your section of the course. Indefinite is a hard-to-define word; assume at least several months after the course ends, and most likely longer. We also provide downloadable transcripts of all videos and you're free to save these for future reference.