Writing a Novel (Evening)

We usually say you’ll need to set aside five to seven hours per week, outside of class time. This is for your own writing – sometimes in response to a particular task your tutor has set you, but generally just for making progress on your novel – and for reading the extracts of the students being workshopped the following week. If you have more time available for writing, that’s absolutely brilliant. But five to seven hours will keep everything ticking over nicely.

The tutors read all the applications and they, along with the Academy team, then put together class lists based on a couple of factors. There may be students writing on subjects or in genres that the tutors feel they’d be helpful with, or with writing samples that particularly excite them. We’re also looking to put together groups who will complement each other and provide a broad range of experience and interest. So for example, we’ll try and avoid a situation where fourteen of you are writing crime and one of you is writing epic fantasy.

You’re more than welcome to request a specific tutor and we’ll do what we can to facilitate that if it’s possible, once those other considerations have been taken into account.

Absolutely – you’ll just need to submit two separate applications. And if you’re available for either, but have a preference for one, we ask that you indicate that on your application as it will be helpful when we’re putting together potential class lists.

Not necessarily! It’s often the case that students have to miss a session over the course of the six months. You’d just need to let your tutor know in advance so that they can give you any handouts you’ll miss, and you’ll usually find that your classmates will be happy to share notes afterwards too. Having said that, if you know you’d be missing more than two consecutive classes, that’s a little different. Get in touch and we’ll be happy to advise.

There are fifteen students per class.

You’ll receive feedback from the entire group on 10,000 words of your novel – this is usually done in two separate peer presentation sessions of 5,000 words, spaced out during the six months. These discussions are led by your tutor. You’ll also have a one-to-one with your tutor towards the end of the course.

Yes. You’ll have guest speaker sessions with at least one agent and editor during the course, and these slots include a Q&A session where you’ll be able to ask them your own questions. You’ll also submit an extract of your novel to us at the end of the course for inclusion in our anthology. We send this to a long list of UK literary agents, and they’ll be able to contact you directly if they’d like to see more.

Yes, absolutely. We’ve had previously published and currently agented authors take the course before, for many reasons – whether you’re looking to build up your technical knowledge, or changing genre, or just feel in need of the structure of a course and the camaraderie of a group, we’re more than happy to see an application from you even if you’re at the more experienced side of the scale.