A New Novel Class!
Plus, I'm in bed with Chester Cheetah
Three things to start your weekend. First, a big announcement:
I’ll Teach You Stuff
And I might even tell you what I’m doing with my hands in this Zoom screen cap…
After teaching my Novel in a Year class at StoryStudio Chicago for the past 12 years, I'm leaving it in capable hands and will instead be doing 6 general admission online lectures this fall, starting November 14th.
Classes can be watched live and/or recorded; live attendees will be able to ask questions. No workshopping, reading, or other homework will be required. This class is relevant for those working in any genre of novel, and there’s no attendance cap.
What Stuff?
I’ve noticed that there are three common places a novelist gets stuck: page zero, page thirty, and page one hundred. That first sticking point is, of course, about lacking the nerve to begin—while those stuck around page thirty have likely begun with great hope, only to realize either they’re missing the knowledge they need to structure an entire novel, or that they’re not sure what this book is even really about. Those who make it to around the hundredth page have overcome those initial hurdles but are still faced with the great impossibility that is the middle of the novel.
Whether or not you’re stuck, the idea of the class is to give you a novelist’s toolkit for seeing your draft through to completion and beyond
Lectures will be presented live, with time for Q&A; they will also be recorded so you can catch up on a class you missed or review the material again. No workshopping, reading, or other homework will be required. The class is relevant for those working in any genre of novel.
Our six classes will be:
The Work Plan
We’ll talk outlining (when, how, why), schedule, work ethic, the myth of writer’s block, and how to keep working for the long haul. We’ll also talk about realism regarding the size and scope of the project you’ve cut out for yourself, and how to know when you’re tackling too much or too little.
Structure, Momentum, Tension, Stakes
While there’s no formula for a novel’s structure (and books that tell you otherwise are going to lead you down the path of predictability and cliche), there are some core elements of story structure that transcend genre, time, and culture — ones that it’s best to know, even if only to rebel against. We’ll talk about the arc of a novel, and the momentum and tension and stakes that will keep a reader turning pages.
Backstage Decisions
There are some big, heady decisions we have to make early in the novel process — ones about point of view, framework, the point of telling, the ear of the story, the rules of telling, and the rules of the world. These are the kinds of decisions you can ignore for a little while, until your novel runs smack into its own impossibility. We’ll talk through these choices, what they mean, and how to go about making them.
Pacing, Backstory, and Balance
A common drafting mistake is the Chapter Two Information Dump, in which we learn everything about a character all at once. But another common mistake is not slowing down to give us the information we need in order to care about the character. There are solutions to this paradox! We’ll talk about backstory, memory, and flashback, as well as the cause-and-effect foundations of forward, ongoing action.
Character, Dialogue, Interiority
We expect more out of a novel character than we do from a short story character (who might be quickly painted) or from a film character (who most likely lacks interiority). We’ll talk about creating and sustaining long-haul characters, about the many layers of interiority that can give them life and depth, about mapping character relationships, and about the dialogue that we rely on particularly to bring non-point-of-view characters to life.
Macro Edits, Micro Edits
A completed first draft is simply the moment when you meet your novel for the first time; much, if not most, of the work still lies ahead. We’ll talk about the stamina needed for those edits, as well as strategies and steps for mid-stream edits, full-draft edits, restructuring, rewriting, and retroactive outlining. We’ll also talk about the finer grades of sandpaper we need later on, polishing on the level of the line. And we’ll talk about what to do when a draft is running too long.
What’s the link?
What are you doing with your hands?
I'll be honest, I have NO idea what I was doing with my hands in that picture. I rarely have any idea what my hands are doing. One of the joys of this class will be that you can watch my hands flying around.
How To Sell Out to Cheetos Without Even Trying
Yesterday, I received an email from a reader who was irate that I had “sold out to Cheetos.” It took me a long minute to figure out what she meant, but I finally cracked it: In one scene of I Have Some Questions for You, my characters eat Cheetos. (Because I write about the real world, and real world has Cheetos in it. Because I’m writing about someone with disordered eating, and junk food is a relevant topic. Because it’s about an adult thinking back on adolescence, and—at least to me—Cheetos belong to that era. Because that orange dust on your fingers makes a nice, vivid visual moment.)
But this reader apparently believed that the Frito Lay marketing department had approached me, paid me some substantial amount of money, and then I looked through my novel and found a place to plant Cheetos.
In case it needs to be said: Uh, NO.
I do understand that there are two reasons she might think this.
One is that on, say, The Bachelor (viewed by 3-4 million people), yes, a bag of Cheetos is a sponsored thing. Not so for the world of literary novels. Although I do love the idea of the Frito Lay execs sitting around and tossing out the names of prospective authors! “David Mitchell?” “Nah, he’s more of a Pringles guy.” “But Whitehead won’t go lower than 300k for one Cheeto!” “Okay, hear me out: We get the folks at Penguin Classics to toss some into Dracula.”
The other reason is this novel, The Bulgari Connection, published by Fay Weldon in 2000 to much public freak-out.
Apparently, Bulgari (the Italian jeweler) paid her a large amount of money for mentioning their name at least twelve times. She actually mentioned it 34 times, according to the Wikipedia article that quotes such stunning sentences as “A Bulgari necklace in the hand is worth two in the bush,” said Doris, and They snuggled together happily for a bit, all passion spent; and she met him at Bulgari that lunchtime. The book received the collected scorn of the book world and was the subject of many essays. The phenomenon has not continued, at least not in any notable way.
Well, unless I’m only telling you that because I’m secretly in the pocket of Big Snack.
Honestly, don’t you kind of wish this were a thing, though? No one would force a writer to do it, but a cash-strapped novelist could have their character drive a Jeep and eat at Wendy’s and pick up a few bucks. And sure, we could roll our eyes at them for selling out, but better the money go to starving writers than The Bachelor.
And Finally, a Backpack:
The odds that someone at Jansport read my new novel and decided to name a new backpack after the boarding school therein, and then rushed that backpack to market between February and now, are… slim.
But could we all agree to pretend that this is fan art?
Or… Maybe I took that sweet, sweet Jansport promo money.
(By the way, for the curious: The reason I named the town and the school Granby is that there’s a Granby, Vermont, there’s a Granby, Mass, there’s a Granby, Connecticut, and there’s a Granby, New York… but there’s no real Granby, New Hampshire. Sounds real, isn’t real.)
That’s all. Look for my new novel, The Great Doritos, forthcoming in 2026.
Will the classes be available via recording by chance (after payment of course!) or is live the only option?
How do we sign up for the classes? Sounds terrific. LOL love the Cheeto humor.