- Level
- Mixed
- Basic and Premium Members Prices
- Premium Members $40 & Basic Members $50
- Category
- Characters
- Description/Setting
- Structure
- GMC
- Plotting
- Shorts/Novella
In this twelve-lesson class, NYT best-selling author, Angela Knight, demonstrates how she plots, writes, and revises a short novel.
Please note this is a pre-recorded video class! Angela will drop into the class once a week to answer any questions that you have.
Where Brainstorming to Revision dealt with the short story, in this class Angela digs into novel construction. She uses a combination of video demonstrations, written lessons, worksheets, and free one-on-one critiques to help you learn how to write a book readers will love.
Class Overview:
Please note this is a pre-recorded video class! Angela will drop into the class once a week to answer any questions that you have.
Where Brainstorming to Revision dealt with the short story, in this class Angela digs into novel construction. She uses a combination of video demonstrations, written lessons, worksheets, and free one-on-one critiques to help you learn how to write a book readers will love.
Class Overview:
1. Introduction: what to expect with the class.
2. Initial Idea: Angela shows how to research your Work In Progress using various techniques. She explains how to spot information that definitely belongs in the book. She then explains how to use that information to brainstorm the broad events that will make up the book.
3. Conflict and Character Creation: In a video, Angela demonstrates the character creation sheet you can use to write your book. She discusses the three forms of conflict that form any good novel’s foundation. Then she goes into the reasons your protagonists must be badly screwed up.
4. Heroes Assemble: Angela uses the character sheet to show you how to develop your hero, giving him the internal conflicts and wounds that make a Happy Ever After seem unlikely. She also shows how to motivate those conflicts and wounds with believable backstory.
5. Wonder Women: Next Angela uses the sheet to create the last woman that hero would ever want to fall in love with. She shows how the heroine’s internal scars, goals and motivations combine to create a powerful romantic conflict while making her a strong and memorable character.
6. A Few Bad Men (and Women): Angela demonstrates the construction of antagonists designed to attack your protagonists’ greatest weaknesses. This creates terrific tension in the book, and drives readers to keep reading. She also discusses how to make the antagonist a fully realized, three-dimensional character instead of a cartoon villain.
7. Blueprint to Success: just as you wouldn’t start building a house without a blueprint, you need to create a series of events that complicates your protagonists’ lives. Angela demonstrates the worksheet she uses to plot her books and explains the plot ingredients you need for a solid foundation. Without that foundation, you’ll find finishing the book difficult and frustrating.
8. Dynamic Entry: Angela discusses how to write a first chapter that sucks readers in and makes them pounce on the BUY button. She talks about how to provide each protagonist with a first scene that shows who they are, what their biggest problem is, and the challenges they must resolve before they get their HEA.
9. Washboard Middles: how to keep the middle of your book rippling with tension so the reader wouldn’t even dream of putting it down.
10. Endgame: Angela covers avoiding anti-climaxes, choreographing fight scenes, and resolving your characters’ internal, external, and romantic conflicts in a heart- pounding scene that sends readers looking for your backlist.
11. Second Draft Craft: Angela demonstrates how to fix problematic scenes that lack energy and emotion.
12. Finishing Touches: in this video, Angela demonstrates how to clean up badly written sentences and make them sing.
In almost thirty years as a published author, Angela Knight has written 27 novels, 35 novellas and two books on writing. During her 14 years with Penguin-Putnam (now Penguin-Random House), her books hit the bestseller lists of The New York Times, USA Today and Publishers Weekly on multiple occasions. In 2022, she won the Passionate Plume award for Best Speculative Romance from the Passionate Ink erotic romance authors organization.- Class Format
- This class is a self-paced video class. Each lesson contains a pre-recorded video, text-based worksheets, and discussion threads. You may access the videos any time during the class. While specific homework is suggested to understand the class material better, the instructor will not critique or provide feedback on any homework.
Angela will drop into the class once a week to answer any questions that you have.
Savvy Authors' workshops are held on a forum: a bulletin board-based system. You will receive a reminder notice that includes instructions on how to access the workshop forum. If you have not received instructions when you register, please check your spam filter.
