a Start Your Novel workshop
In-person Workshop
at The Coastguard Cultural Centre, Tramore, Co. Waterford
10 am to 3 pm
(Doors open 9.45 am)
Saturday 25 January 2025
€60
Payment plan 2 x €30 is also available when booking.
Booking and payment is through the course platform Podia. It’ll have your learning resources after the workshop.
You’ll be asked to enter your email address, set a password, and pay via Stripe.
for novel dreamers and imaginers…
… turn your story idea into the first draft…
Dear Novel Dreamer,
This workshop will go deeper into your novel idea, developing novel craft, and creating ways to get to ‘The End’. We’ll do that through character development, descriptions, dialogue, plotting, and writing strategies for you to start and write the first draft of your novel.
You’ll learn enough novel craft to write your first draft.
What you’ll learn in this workshop:
Novel basics including layout, genre, and length.
Develop characters in thoughts, speech, body, and background.
The sensory and telling details in descriptions.
Enhancing plot with subplots and other story structures.
How to drop into scene to write your novel.
Resilience strategies to keep your writing going through your first draft.
Pre-work NOTE: This workshop assumes that you’ve done the Your Novel Idea workshop. There will be a recap of what was covered in the first workshop so please bring your workbook from that workshop with you. A summary page for your novel ideas will be in the Your First Draft workbook.
IMPORTANT NOTE: None of your ideas need to be shared with others during the workshop.
Your first draft is freedom
It’s the flight of ideas forming across the page in words.
It’s words that create images, sounds, senses, and actions into being.
It’s about what happened and what happened next.
It’s your dream realised in scenes and chapters.
It’s the start of life of a novel.
Writing can be a lonely process so in-person workshops help you meet other writers. Also, a location outside of our homes gives us space to focus on our writer needs and our novel.
All the novel first draft prompts are in a workbook to help you record your novel ideas at the workshop and afterwards when you’re back home.
The workshop is in the Main Gallery upstairs at the Coastguard Cultural Centre in Tramore, Co. Waterford. I love the incredible views of Tramore Bay.
At the Coastguard Cultural Centre, there’s an on-site Café and you’ll be able to purchase take-away options before we start and during breaks through the workshop.
There’s free parking near and around the centre. For accessibility, there’s a lift inside up to the Main Gallery.
A pdf copy of the slides, and any other references/resources, from the workshop will be available inside Podia – the course portal. At payment, you set-up a Podia account and it’ll have all the information you need before the workshop starts.
Using Podia means I can also offer a payment plan for this workshop.
I’m a Novel Navigator and a science fiction author, ‘The Alien Eve’, and have poetry and short stories in two anthologies.
For over a decade, I’ve facilitated and supported writers, one-to-one and in creative and novel writing groups.
I help Novel Dreamers write their novels and avoid
the FECC-ing iWARs*
*Female Expected Conformance Culture (or just ECC) MEETS the Impossible Writing Achievement Regulations
The ‘who you think you need to be’ MEETS ‘exactly how you should write’ before you can write a novel.
I know the dream of being a novel writer and I know that taking the first step of anything can be the hardest thing to do. It can be both scary and exciting to want to write a novel.
Remember, you’re a novel dreamer and you’re a writer.
Book your place and let’s dive deeper into creating your novel so you can continue your novel journey.
This is for Novel Dreamers.
This is your novel.
a Start Your Novel workshop
In-person Workshop
at The Coastguard Cultural Centre, Tramore, Co. Waterford
10 am to 3 pm
(Doors open 9.45 am)
Saturday 25 January 2025
€60
Payment plan 2 x €30 is also available when booking.
Booking and payment is through the course platform Podia. It’ll have your learning resources after the workshop.
You’ll be asked to enter your email address, set a password, and pay via Stripe.