Tuesday, August 29, 2017

Would You Take This Class?

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Few writers make much (if any) money. Did you know that? You don’t do this to get rich because that reason and the lottery odds have a lot in common.

Over the years, I’ve thought about a variety of ways to supplement my royalties. I could sell some of my professional/writing craft books on Amazon’s used books section. I could write advertising copy for companies. I could write quick and dirty writing craft books and indie publish them. I even considered offering on-line classes. That’s a novel idea for a former educator, right?

I approached the co-founder of one of my favorite on-line writing class sites with a couple of ideas for teaching classes for them. Might they be interested? It turns out they might.

I’m not naming the site or the person (yet) I contacted since “interest” is a long way from “implementation.” I’m just trying out some ideas here. I’m looking for help. Tell me what you think.

One excellent suggestion I was given was to offer the class to a few beta participants so I could refine the class after the initial design. Great! I will do that!

In the meantime, I am working on the 20 class lessons I could offer. Here are the general areas I’ve come up with so far. In the comments section, please offer critiques, suggestions, options, and other ideas that might help me design this course.

First the title.

The course is sharing with others and having them try the elements that I use when I plan my novels. I am a mega-planner, most of the time. The system I’ve developed over the years is what helps me “win” National Novel Writing Month, “winning” being defined as producing at least 50,000 words in 30 days.Whether the participant wants to win NaNoWriMo or whether heesh just wants to try the jump-start apart from NaNoWriMo, this course is designed to ramp up the planning process.

So what would be a good title for a mega-planning class? Planning Your NaNoWriMo Novel? Write/Writing Your Novel in 30 Days?  Planning for NaNoWriMo? Or do you have another idea?

I would pitch this as being for novels not yet written, novel ideas not drafts.

Topics to be covered in 20 lessons (some take more than one day to present):
 
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            Plotter or Pantser? A spurious distinction.
            Choosing a mentor text for assignments; what it is and
                   why it’s important
            Recommendations for several craft books for later
                  reading such as Larry Brooks' Story Engineering and 
                  James Scott Bell's Write Your Novel from the Middle 
                  and others
            What planning gets you and why you should do it
            Bell’s 14 signposts
  Bell’s five essential tent poles
            Premise vs concept
            Concepts and sub-concepts
            10 key events
            Character sketches
            Story treatment
            Scene grid Elements
            Using the scene grid for planning
            Writing the first scene


Lessons/Assignments (some take more than one day):
  
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            Advantages of plotter. Advantages of pantser. Where are
                  you and why?
            Choosing your mentor text—the components: your 
                  genre; recent; well-written
            List craft books you’ve read and their influence on you
            What does “planning” mean?
            Find examples of Bell’s signposts in mentor text
            List your concept. List your premise.
            Identify your sub-concepts
            List your 10 key events
            Write five character sketches
            Write a three-page story treatment with main characters 
                   and plot twists including the ending
            Design your scene grid
            Fill in your scene grid from the middle out
            Write the first scene from your scene grid

So the question remains: would you take this course? Do you have suggestions for inclusion or change?

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Facebook: Sharon Arthur Moore wonders if you’d take this on-line writing class on how to plan your novel. What suggestions do you have for improvement? http://bit.ly/2xlWx4P

Twitter: Would You Take This Class? Give feedback for a proposed on-line writing class for novel planning. http://bit.ly/2xlWx4P

2 comments:

  1. Sharon, this sounds fascinating! I'd love to be a beta student...and while I'm terrible at coming up with titles (even for my own books & classes), I don't think NaNoWriMo will let anybody use their name in a "commercial" enterprise. In any case, now you've got me very curious to read James Scott Bell. :)

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    Replies
    1. Thanks, Laurie. I can certainly drop NaNoWriMo. I'm thinking, with all that's going on, I can offer the class this winter. Thanks for the feedback. JSB is one of my go-to writing gurus. I appreciate the feedback!

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