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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