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Build Your Novel
Scene by Scene

MARK SPENCER

Build Your Novel Scene by Scene

MARK SPENCER

$599.99

12/19/2024 - 03/13/2025

Enroll Now

If you want to learn how to write a story, but aren’t quite ready yet to hunker down and write 10,000 words or so a week, this is the course for you. Build Your Novel Scene by Scene will offer you the impetus, the guidance, the support, and the deadline you need to finally stop talking, start writing, and, ultimately, complete that novel you always said you wanted to write.

We'll walk through the entire novel-writing process together, from day one to a completed draft. To begin, we'll think about whether or not your novel concept can sustain 200+ pages. We’ll spend time doing the important work of outlining and assessing the narrative arc of your story. We’ll think more deeply about your characters, their desires, and their motivations. Then, the bulk of these next few weeks will be spent writing your novel scene by scene by scene.

$599.99

12/19/2024 - 03/13/2025

Enroll Now

If you want to learn how to write a story, but aren’t quite ready yet to hunker down and write 10,000 words or so a week, this is the course for you. Build Your Novel Scene by Scene will offer you the impetus, the guidance, the support, and the deadline you need to finally stop talking, start writing, and, ultimately, complete that novel you always said you wanted to write.

We'll walk through the entire novel-writing process together, from day one to a completed draft. To begin, we'll think about whether or not your novel concept can sustain 200+ pages. We’ll spend time doing the important work of outlining and assessing the narrative arc of your story. We’ll think more deeply about your characters, their desires, and their motivations. Then, the bulk of these next few weeks will be spent writing your novel scene by scene by scene.

Course outline

Course outline

Each session includes a reading assignment, a written lecture, and a writing assignment to turn in for personalized feedback from your instructor.

Meet the instructor

Mark Spencer

Mark Spencer is the author of the novels An Untimely Frost, Ghost Walking, The Masked Demon, The Weary Motel (Omaha Prize for the Novel, Faulkner Award for the Novel), and Love and Reruns in Adams County; the best-selling nonfiction novel A Haunted Love Story: the Ghosts of the Allen House; as well as the short-story collections Wedlock, Spying on Lovers (Bradshaw Book Award), and Trespassers.

His short stories and articles have appeared in a wide variety of national and international magazines. He has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize eight times and has received four Special Mentions in Pushcart Prize: Best of the Small Presses. He also won the St. Andrews Press Short Fiction Prize. Trespassers, Mark’s most recent short-story collection, was a finalist in four national book competitions: the Serena McDonald Kennedy Award, the G.S. Sharat Chandra Prize for Short Fiction, the A.E. Coppard Long Fiction Prize, and the Quarterly West Novella Competition.

After earning his B.A. in English Literature at the University of Cincinnati, Mark earned his M.F.A. in Creative Writing at Bowling Green State University and did Ph.D. work at Oklahoma State University.

Mark is a professor of English and Creative Writing in the MFA program and Associate Vice Chancellor in Academic Affairs at the University of Arkansas at Monticello. Several times, Mark has been named to Who’s Who Among America’s Teachers.

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