NaNoWriMo! Now What?

So you’ve written thousands of words and now you have something approximating a novel. We’ll look at how to transform it into something you can share with readers. Using the tool of the book proposal, we’ll contemplate questions like: who will want to read this book? what do they like? where are they found? how do we connect with them? At the same time, we’ll approach revision from the top down, asking questions about theme and purpose, developing tools to provide a big picture, playing around with structure, creating tension in scenes, sharpening dialogue and polishing sentences. Students can follow one path or the other or both, working towards a completed proposal and/or a plan for revision.