Students who study creative writing are often looking to make the same dream come true: writing and publishing a novel. For most, the scariest part of that process begins with the first part of that statement—the actual process of sitting down and starting to write a longer work. It can be hard to know where to start or what to watch out for in the first few chapters, but with the University of Iowa’s course on novel writing, students are able to take those first steps.
When I participated in the Novel Writing class during my sophomore year, one of my favorite parts about the course was that it was taught asynchronously. While I prefer classes that I can sit in and see my fellow classmates, this class was a rare case in which I preferred being able to find time for the course work rather than having a class or two a week. This mode also worked for the curriculum since the semester was split up into two different sections: one section for reading novels and the other for presenting ours.
No worries though! Students were not expected to complete an entire novel over the course of a single semester. Instead, they were asked to write about 8,000 to10,000 words (or three chapters worth) of content that would be presented to the class. While students used the first half of the semester to rev up their word counts, the curriculum also required them to read three novels and submit discussion posts about the chapter sections. For my course, we were required to read All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy, Gilead by Marilynne Robinson, and Beloved by Toni Morrison. These were three novels I had never read before, and to this day I still think about how amazing they were at showing students how powerful novels can be!
But my favorite part of the class was the second half, where I got to read what my peers were writing. I still recall some of my favorites and I’m desperately waiting to see some them published someday! It was also great to see as an aspiring author the impact of my first few chapters and to receive feedback on what could be tweaked in my revision process.
One of the wonderful skills that this class taught students was how to be a helpful reader and editor for novels. Unlike short stories (which most of us were used to seeing in workshop settings), a novel’s first chapters are a slice of the entire plot, so this forced students to engage differently with the material in comparison to how they would handle a short story. Students were forced to reconcile with not having all the answers to the plot, the characters, and the world, and instead, do more of the work of a literary agent by asking where could the story go, what’s keeping it from being engaging now, and how could the characters’ wants and desires be brought out earlier on? As a publishing industry hopeful, this is a necessary skill that ended up helping me much later when I began my internships.
For students looking to learn how to craft novels or those who simply need time to sit down and start writing, the University of Iowa’s Novel Writing course is a great first step in making a dream into a reality. I actually ended up finishing my novel. Had this course not existed, I may not have had the chance, which is why I encourage other students to make the attempt and start the process of making their dreams come true!