Cheshire Novel Prize Summer School 2024 Is Now Closed For Registration
Self -edit your novel
Summer School will help you to put your work in progress under the microscope and self-edit your novel with the support of weekly interactive live workshops, worksheets, an online private chat forum via an app, and recordings sent afterwards for you to keep. Or if you still are writing your first draft, this course will improve your craft as you write forward.
The weekly 2 hour live workshops will allow entrants to ask questions and reflect on previous sessions. In addition to the 6 live workshops, we will also host one live event (details to be confirmed), and one live agent event at the end of the course. These events are exclusive to summer school attendees only.
Here’s what some of our past students said about our last two courses in 2022 and 2023:
‘Summer school was pivotal in me securing an agent.’
‘Sara’s teaching is like an MA on speed! I can’t recommend this course highly enough.’
‘Summer school got me my agent. I am so grateful to Sara Naidine Cox for her brilliant teaching.’
‘Summer School has given me the confidence to write the novel I wanted to write. Unbelievable value and the best self-edit course around.’
‘I couldn't believe the price of this course. It’s worth ten times that!’
‘Summer School taught me so much. Normally you are taught surface level stuff. This is a deep, deep dive into craft which blew my mind. I am a much better, more confident writer for it.’
Summer School runs from September through October/first week in November 2024 and is taught during Thursday evenings at 7pm or Saturday afternoons at 2pm. Summer School is run by our founder Sara Naidine Cox and is suitable for writers of any genre. You can still enter Cheshire Novel Prize or Cheshire Novel Prize Kids if you attend summer school as Sara does not read or judge entries for the competitions.
This online course via Zoom, will cover:
Week Zero – Introductions/Ice Breaker
This Zoom call will introduce all delegates on the course to each other, set objectives and goals and understand how the course works. This is also a good time for questions regarding the course. We will also have guest speaker talking about editing processes.
Week One – Plot, Story & Structure
Have you started your novel in the right place? Have you dropped your reader right into the action? Is your story strong enough to sustain 80,000 + words? Does each chapter earn its place with the right amount of dramatic structure?
Week Two – Characterisation
Are your characters worth investing in? Will your readers care about them? Do they have agency? In this session we will do a deep dive into characterisation. Is your dialogue authentic?
Week Three Voice & Point of View
Is your POV close enough? Have you chosen the right tense, POV? Have you created an authentic engaging narrative voice? This session will look at how to get this right.
Week Four – Narrative & Prose
This final week will look at how you structure your sentences. Do you have a varied rhythm of sentences for depth and texture? Are you using too many adverbs or filler words or filter words or relying on dialogue tags? In this session, we put your narrative under the microscope and learn how to make your book the best it can be.
Course includes:
Live taught workshops & recordings.
Worksheets & supporting materials.
Free private chat group for all attendees via an app.
One private live author event on Zoom with published authors talking about their editing process (dates TBC).
One private live agent event talking about submissions and giving you handy hints and tips for polishing your draft (dates TBC).
*Please note we miss one week from 23rd September to 30th September due to CNP Winner announcement
Timings:
Course A: Thursdays 7pm-9pm UK time via Zoom:
September 19th, October 3rd, 10th, 17th, 24th and 31st 2024.
Agent and author event dates TBC
Course B:
Saturday 2pm-4pm UK time via Zoom: September 21st, October 5th, 12th, 19th, 26th, and November 2nd, 2024.
Agent and author event TBC
We don’t ask you to BETA read each others’ work. We believe the quality of the feedback can be variable based on individual knowledge, plus it is time consuming. However if you want to comment on each other’s homework tasks you can do so through our private chat forum. That way you are all feeding back with the same knowledge base and for the six weeks you are only focussed on your novel’s progress. There is also a Q&A session after each session where Sara will answer questions.
Price £189.00 per person.
Registration is now closed.
Cancellation policy
If you wish to withdraw from the course you must email us at least one calendar month prior to the course start date to request a full refund. However, due to card platform fees and admin fees we cannot issue a full refund for cancellations for less than one full calendar month before the course starts. Therefore, in these instances, a refund minus our platform costs and admin fees is refundable solely at our discretion(except under the cancellation terms of the Consumer Contracts Regulations of 13 June 2014).