Attention aspiring novelists, get your manuscripts (and your coffee!) ready for Novel Boot Camp! It’s a brand new writing course and workshop that will be offered for FREE throughout the month of July.
There will be lessons/lectures and a homework assignment every weekday. There will also be workshops where your fellow boot-campers and I will help polish your prose to perfection.
Unlike other online writing events, Novel Boot Camp focuses not on the writing process, but on editing a novel you have already written. It’s not about word counts or brainstorming, it’s about figuring out what’s NOT working with your novel so that you can make it stronger and more appealing to agents, publishers, and readers.
You don’t have to have a full novel to participate (though most of a first draft is ideal), and you do not have to participate in every assignment or workshop. This commitment is as big or as small as you want it to be.
The Schedule
June 23rd: A special “meet and greet” blog will be posted where you can use the comments to pick your friends, allies, and critique partners – the people who will help you through Novel Boot Camp madness!
June 30th: The Kickoff Party, which will include the start of our first workshop!
Workshop 1: The Genre Guessing Game (details to come). Prize: A free 1,000 word edit and critique!
First Week of July: The Beginning — Lessons will focus on what makes a beginning great, how to introduce your main character, and much more!
Workshop 2: First paragraph critique session. Prize: A free 1,000 word edit and critique!
Second Week of July: Conflict — It’s what makes the novel go round! Learn how to make it interesting, satisfying, and exciting.
Workshop 3: TBA – Suggestions/ideas in the comments would be welcome!
Third Week of July: The Middle – Learn what makes a middle great and how to avoid the dreaded “saggy middle.”
Workshop 4: TBA – Suggestions/ideas in the comments would be welcome!
Fourth Week of July: Nuts and Bolts – Lessons focus on replacing weak words with strong ones and learning when to tell and when to show.
Workshop 5: Query Letter Critique. Prize: A free query letter edit and critique.
Fifth Week of July: The Ending – Explore what makes an ending great and how to best tie up your story.
August 1st: Wrap Party/Closing Ceremony.
Workshop Info: The workshops will be posted on Sunday or Monday of each week and will last the entire week to give everyone a chance to participate. I will edit/critique/participate as much as possible, but I cannot possibly respond to every single comment. The goal of the workshops is to facilitate a fun and supportive learning environment for writers to critique each other.
**I am still looking for a couple more workshop ideas! If you have any ideas, please post in the comments! The workshops must be able to be performed in the comments section of this blog.
Sign Up
There is no official sign up for Novel Boot Camp. You can be notified of the lectures and workshops by following me on Twitter, following the blog, or signing up to the mailing list.
Spread the Word!
Please help me spread the word about Novel Boot Camp to all the writers who could benefit! Share this blog post wherever you can: Facebook, Twitter (#NovelBootCamp), Reddit, StumbleUpon, and beyond! My goal is to help as many writers as possible get closer to their publishing dreams.
About the Organizer
I (Ellen Brock) am a freelance novel editor and writing coach. I work with aspiring writers as well as traditionally and self-published authors. I offer a variety of editing services as well as mentoring/coaching. When not editing (which is rare), I enjoy geocaching, reading, and watching movies.
Ellen Brock 
Ellen for Dialog workshop I can only think of tree ways:
1st
We post a section of dialog from our novels and then we comment on them to see what we do and what we don’t like as readers, including how the things you have taught in your lesson fit or not depending on the case. (but its hard as we wont know the personalities of the characters just by a small extract)
2nd
You make up characters with as small amount of info like personality traits and describe a scene, like for example “Jessica enters the room were john is and picks up a book, johns chair breaks making Jessica jumps, she helps him up and dusts him down” . then we wright the dialog to the scene and submit it to you, probably by email then you can post them all together making shore we cant cheat and copy, then we can see how each writer has portrayed the characters personalities in the dialog.
3rd
The same as the 2nd but instead of all doing the same we divide in groups. Keeping the same scene each group get assign different characters with different traits, on group may have Jessica how is a flirty character where another group have instead Mather how is a rude short tempered character, as the action of the scene is the same it will only change by the difference in there personalities.
Don’t know if these ideas will help
Good luck to all and don’t stop writing ^_^”
Great ideas! Thank you! I will think about it and see what will work best.
Ideas: I would really enjoy a workshop on creating a good book blurb/ summary for the back of the book.
Good point, Briana. One thing I can add to that discussion – be aware of how much room you have/want to work with. It will be restricted by the graphic design/artwork and vice-versa. If you already have the artwork part worked out, you know how much space you have left. If you write your blurb first, it will determine how much [if any] space you have left for illustrations.
is that will be online ?if it so, how can I join ? I am not a writer, but I hope to learn something.
Yes, it’s online. You can just check back at the dates posted or you can join the mailing list (link above) or follow the blog via email or RSS. Thanks!
Hey Ellen,
Love your site! You are one of the few free-lance editors I’ve found with an extensive breakdown of the writing and editing stages that is not only comprehensive but comprehensible in nature. – Thank You!
At present, I am finishing the last chapter of the first book of my first novel series (genre-fantasy/130K-140K count), before jumping into to a strong re-work, edit and polish. With the light at the end of the tunnel finally coming into view, I am finding myself being drawn more to the technical side of getting publishing.
I see that you have but a single workshop (5) for Query Letter Critique, and was wondering if you could possibly spend a little more time dealing with the scope of what a strong query letter is comprised of, maybe even discuss the fundamentals of the submission package, which other than the query letter would strongly reference the best way to create an excellent synopsis in order to Hook the reader from the front end.
Thank you for all of your work…huge help indeed.
Thanks for the idea! I think I will probably address synopsis writing after Boot Camp. I want the main focus to be on the book itself rather than on the submission package. But the synopsis is something that I plan to address soon!
This looks great Ellen! Thank you for being the “hub” for writers. Also, I am subscribed to your YouTube page and that’s how I heard about this.
Looking forward to finding my fellow Transgressive Fiction writers on June 30!
Let’s get weird! Haha
See ya then!
Trevor
The thought of participating in this terrifies me – so I’ll probably show up.
I have something in progress that was supposed to be a single novel, and is now 7900+ words, definitely not finished, and going to be at least two books. Is that okay, or should I ‘bring’ one of my even less finished single-novel ideas?
About workshop ideas: my most immediate issue is unoriginality. No matter how hard I try, my stories come out a lot like a remix of something that already exists. I’d like some idea of how much unoriginality is acceptable, and how much gets a novel rejected. Alternately, something specific to the fantasy genre or YA fiction would be helpful.
Hailey – Bring it on, kid! You’ll be surprised how easy it is to kick in original things when you get the juices flowing. If you’ve popped out 7900+ words [is that eight thousand or eighty thousand?] chances are you’ve got more original things up your sleeve than you think. Either way, we’ll be happy to throw suggestions your way. 😉
It’s eighty thousand, I’ve been working on it for two years. Thanks for the comment, it’s nice to communicate with other writers.
I like the idea of the genre guess, but I figure using genre is a good way to pick critique partners. If we give away our genres in the meet & greet, it will be a bit easier to guess them.
How else would we choose our partners? I feel like it could turn into a rehash of elementary dodgeball days. Should we choose by age category instead (by audience, not by writer)?
Workshop ideas:
1) Instead of giving away plot details, writers could check to make sure their theme evolves in each of the three acts (thesis, antithesis, synthesis). Theme is often a terrifying subject for commercial or genre writers, but if done well, it can elevate the writing. Workshop participants comment with one sentence per act stating theme, others comment.
2) Believable characters: making sure that protagonists, antagonists, and secondary characters are rounded by establishing their character motivations. Participants comment with the motivation of their protagonist and 1-2 more characters, others comment.
3) Similar, but slightly different than #2: Character goals. Each character has a superficial goal (usually achieved at the midpoint) and an ultimate goal. Participants comment with both.
The character motivations / goals would be especially helpful for participants writing query letters.
I guess I figured no one would put that much effort into cheating. I plan on having people mention the genres they are interested in critiquing rather than their own specific genre. Critique partners don’t need to write in the exact same genre. There will also be more to the game than what is listed. It’s intended to be more fun than a true competition.
Those are some interesting workshop ideas, but I don’t think they foster enough participation/commenting. They would probably work better for an ordinary blog post with a homework assignment since there’s not much to interact about. I will think about touching on these topics. Thanks!
I don’t think people would cheat, but I wouldn’t guess someone’s genre if I happened to remember what they already mentioned.
Commenting the genres we want to critique, rather than what we’re writing, is a great idea! I’ll do that.
I agree those aren’t ideal for a workshop setting. It’s hard to think of what would work well in the setting of a comment section, online, publicly. I hope you come up with something!
I’d love to participate. I realize your boot camp is for novels and I write creative non-fiction (Humorous, I hope…hehehe. ) If you need more info, please write to me.
Hi Sharon, that’s no problem!
Hey Ellen I’ll be joining your course, I am looking forward to it. I have a whopper of a project I’m trying to figure out, it is my first book, so I imagine I have everything to gain from some professional advice. I might have a leg up on some others though, as my story actually happened! About 6 months ago now. Look forward to working with you
Willy
Hi Ellen,
I’ll be participating as well. I’ve learned a lot from your vids and look forward to learning more.