Each session includes required reading, a written lecture, and a writing assignment to turn in for personalized feedback from your instructor.
Session One: Choosing the Best Outlining Method for You
Session Two: Crafting Your Premise
Session Three: General Sketches: Connecting the Dots
Session Four: Character Sketches: Exploring Backstory
Session Five: Character Sketches: Interviewing Your Characters
Session Six: Discovering Your Setting
Session Seven: Writing the Extended Outline
Session Eight: Creating the Abbreviated Outline
What will you learn?
Who should attend?
Required Reading
Meet the instructor

G. Miki Hayden
G. Miki Hayden’s latest novel just out is a Florida thriller—Political Alliances. All the boxes are ticked—murder, desperation, an odious cult, a virtuous and savvy protagonist who knows the lay of the land from South Florida to the citrus groves and its impoverished pickers. Oh, yes, this is an election year and money counts. A bit of romance brings contention and attraction. Last spring’s new novel from Hayden was a highly praised police procedural, Dry Bones, set in an exciting and diverse Oklahoma. Also out this past year was novel three of the Rebirth trilogy Rescued,Re-Live, and Respiration, the engaging story of martial arts grandmaster Jay Gardner—all literary fiction with strong plot and character elements and powerful openings. Hayden also recently sold four novels for electronic serialization, while her first novel in print, Pacific Empire (an alternate history), won a rave in the NYTimes and was on that paper’s Summer Reading List. The sequel, New Pacific, was in print in 2004. Other novels of Hayden’s in print are By Reason of Insanity (a mystery), Question Woman & Howling Sky (a post-apocalyptic novel set in the West), Strings (a middle-grade fantasy), and The Heroine’s Journey (a YA fantasy set in the Middle Ages and our own time). Miki has had many short stories published, including in Alfred Hitchcock and Ellery Queen and in three Mystery Writers of America anthologies (winning an Edgar for one). She has further published in science fiction and romance genres. Miki has two writing instructionals in print—Writing the Mystery in its third edition and The Naked Writer, a style guide, also in its third edition. She has taught at Writer’s Digest University online for more than twenty years.