Craft Pre-Plan Your Novel and Write it Faster with Joan Koster

This is my second class from Joan. I love her teaching style. It doesn't feel like a lecture, but rather a conversation. I learned so much about the senses and also when to use sensory descriptions. I also learned how to use sensory descriptions in effective ways. Joan's assignments are tailored to the lesson and are simple, yet instructive. She gives great feedback, both constructive and kind.

This class was excellent. It gave me ideas on where and how to add sensory elements and also made me pay attention to the places I had already written them.

Fantastic in-depth yet applicable knowledge of our seven senses and how to then take this knowledge and apply it to our writing at the line level. I was somewhat disappointed that examples of integrating the seven senses from printed books were taken from such a narrow genre cross-section of books. I do not write genre romance or speculative fiction, and I would've liked to have seen how acclaimed authors from a wide variety of genres are integrating the seven senses into their work in not just commercial writing, but literary and upmarket fiction as well.

This course was amazing. The lessons were very informational and I learned so much! The homework was given at the same time as the lesson, which made it easy to apply the lesson right away. The homework was well-thought-out and enriched the learning. I learned more from this class than I have from workshops costing hundreds of dollars!

I can't say enough good things about the instructor as well. She was extremely knowledgeable and gave excellent, kind-hearted constructive feedback. She led me to new insights as well as expanded on what I already knew. She encouraged critical thinking and creativity. I'm going to take more classes from her!

I cannot praise this instructor and course. It is mind opening and amazingly useful and enriching. The class was interactive and participants received feedback from the instructor and classmates. The course lectures are practical and useful. I highly recommend this class and any course given by this instructor. I applaud this course and instructor and have gone on an amazingly insightful journey during the class. I wanted to give more stars than allowed.

Thank you so much Joan for these excellent tips. I know I'm going to refer to them each time I edit a manuscript.

I enjoyed Joan's class. She presented the materials in an easy-to-understand manner and provided helpful videos to accompany the lecture.

I really enjoyed Joan Koster's class about creating a story bible. It was very thorough and creative.

I thoroughly enjoyed this class. I'm always up for learning new methods and techniques. I came away with new ideas, new ways of brainstorming and tracking and focusing my writing. Most importantly, I had motivation and direction to go with my writing, all of it: from outlining to drafting to revising and the final edits.

Joan's has a unique technique for fast drafting your first draft of a novel with many useful tips and tricks I have never read about in other articles on the craft of writing. In fact, I felt she had given us a type of "bible" to follow to ensure that each of us could successfully produce a first draft in record time. She also showed us how we could challenge ourselves to do a little bit faster than the day before. Her method uses sprinting and tracking, recommendations I've seen previously, but she gave those her personal spin. She suggests, for example, we not read in our genre while drafting but rather use visualization right before going to sleep in order to wake up with ideas of what we will write that day. That is just one small example of tools she gives. I was fascinated by this course. I have taken many on SavvyAuthors and elsewhere and I considered this one to be one of the very best if not the absolute best I have ever taken. I'd give her more than 5 stars if I could. She was also very kind in answering a private thread I sent her with just as much detail and compassion as she demonstrated in the preparation of the course. I cannot thank her enough and I wholeheartedly recommend this course material as very, very thorough. She definitely is an author who wants to help others and I really appreciate that.