Novel Boot Camp 2016 – Starts July 1st!
The third annual Novel Boot Camp will be held this July. It will include lectures, discussion questions, and writing workshops. This year, for the first time, lectures will be done in video format. To join Novel Boot Camp 2016, you can follow the blog or my YouTube channel.
Novel Boot Camp 2015
The second annual Novel Boot Camp was held in August 2015.
Novel Boot Camp 2014
Novel Boot Camp was a lecture series and online workshop held in July of 2014. The posts are listed below for your convenience.
The Lectures
Lesson #1: The First Page Promise
Lesson #2: Introducing the Main Character
Lesson #3: How to Avoid Info Dumping
Lesson #4: Writing Believable Dialogue
Lesson #5: Character Motivation
Lesson #6: Internal and External Conflicts
Lesson #7: Be Ruthless
Lesson #8: Writing Believable Antagonists
Lesson #9: The Saggy Middle
Lesson #10: The Character Arc
Lesson #11: Developing Your Voice
Lesson #12: Writing a Series
Lesson #13: Handling Romance
Lesson #14: Strengthening the Setting
Lesson #15: The Climax
Lesson #16: Nailing the Denouement
Lesson #17: Dialogue Tags
Lesson #18: Identifying Your Novel’s Genre
Lesson #19: How to Self-Edit
Workshops
The workshops are closed, however you are welcome to view and learn from the old posts.
Workshop 1: The Genre Guessing Game
Workshop 2: First Page Critique Session
Workshop 3: Help Me, Help Me!
Workshop 4: Ask the Editor
Workshop 5: Query Letter & Blurb Critique
Connect with Other Novel Boot Camp Participants
Even if you missed Novel Boot Camp, you are more than welcome to join us on Twitter or Facebook.
Donate to Novel Boot Camp
This free online course is one of the most ambitious things I’ve ever taken on. My goal is for the course to be a wild success so that it can be repeated (with new content!) year after year. If possible, your donation would help support the huge time investment of Novel Boot Camp. If you can’t afford a donation, I totally understand! Please consider sharing my posts and writing positive reviews on your blog.
Any showing of support (in the comments or through a donation) is so greatly appreciated! Thank you!
Ellen Brock 
Very excited about this! There are many, many tips out there for writing well, but not as much for editing well!
Thanks for your enthusiasm! I’m hoping interest will be high. I have some really great lessons planned!
Ellen,
Thank you so much for putting this together. This is a fantastic idea! I’m very excited about this opportunity. I will be participating (when I can) on the weekly assignments. July is fine. I was just looking online for classes about writing and it adds up! I appreciate that you’re giving up some time to help us.
Awesome! I’m glad you like the idea. I really want to help out writers! Thanks for your enthusiasm!
Very generous! How many people is your Goldilocks number?
In terms of those attending, I’d like at least 50 people who are definitely interested in following the course from beginning to end. But of course there’s no upper end to that!
Really excited about this! I think my fanfic novel will even be completed by then, too! July works just as bad as any other month (except August, which is out of the question for me).
Awesome! I look forward to having you on board!
I’ve invited an author from China to join but that country blocks “WordPress” and they can’t visit your blog. How will that effect their ability to participate in your boot camp?
Well, the boot camp is being held on my blog, so it will be pretty tough for them to participate unless you want to copy the posts and email them to this author. Sorry for the inconvenience, but China blocks so many sites, it would be near impossible to find one that would be available to this author.
This seems like a great opportunity! 🙂 I’m glad I found you through YouTube.
– Ermisenda
Thanks for offering boot camp. Great idea!
Love the Novel Bootcamp idea! Can’t wait to get started. Thank you for so generously offering to help us (writers) out. Let’s do this!
I like the First Paragraph Critique Session/Workshop (with prize for participation) idea a lot, actually. I’m itching to pull all the books of my closest book case and critique first paragraphs, just to get in shape.
Thank you for this effort. I promise to try to make it worth your while however I can.
Thanks Alex! I look forward to hearing more from you and seeing your critiques in July!
I love your ideas, Ellen! I’m currently waist-deep in plot revision based on your BRILLIANT developmental editing, but my goal is to have a clean new draft ready by end of June. The timing of this boot camp is perfect for me to test my corrections against the fire. Count me in. Hooyah!
Awesome! I’m happy to have you! I really hope it helps you finish polishing things!