Are you struggling to find a structure that works for chapters or pieces within your novel?

Do you feel trapped by the minute-to-minute movement of time in particular scenes or between them?

When organizing a novel, writers have lots of strategies for structure at their disposal. Still, most novels are broken into chapters, and it can be challenging to figure out how to structure those chapters.
In this class, participants will learn the function of chapters in a novel, the difference between successful and unsuccessful chapters, how to determine chapter length, and strategies for the beginning, middle, and end of chapters. Participants will read published excerpts and participate in writing exercises (on new work or their work-in-progress) so that they leave the class with a stronger sense of how to best arrange pieces of their manuscript into a coherent whole.

TAKE THIS CLASS IF:

You are looking for practical ideas on how to organize a book length work.
Your novel chapters start with the character waking up and end with the end of a day–and you wish that they didn’t.

ABOUT THE INSTRUCTOR:

Stephanie Noll studied fiction writing at Texas State University, where she earned her MFA. She is a frequent storyteller at The Story Department, a monthly fundraiser for the non-profit Austin Bat Cave, and has also told stories at Listen to Your Mother, Backyard Story Night, Hyde Park Story Night, and the Tellers. Stephanie has 18 years of teaching experience and works as a senior lecturer in the English department at Texas State where she recently was awarded an Excellence in Teaching award. Stephanie is the director of Old Books for New Teachers, an organization that helps first-year teachers build classroom libraries. She has written a novel about a standardized test cheating scandal at an inner-city Houston high school.